Part 16: Epilogue 

I met her when I was still on antibiotics from the music. Was allergic to them and was puffed out and red. She gave me the finger when I tried to introduce myself. Then ran onto the dance floor to dance with someone else. 

I noticed her. I knew I’d see her again because I had to. Would eventually talk more. Weeks later in the Subway where she worked making sandwiches. Eventually in her basement where she asked me if I’d rather go blind or deaf. Then hung her head upside down over the edge of her bed and showed me that this was the way she liked to listen to music. Hair on the floor. Face turning as red as mine. Playing something loud. Saying she could hear it better this way. 

I told her I’d rather go deaf. That being blind would still be worse in ways we couldn’t even imagine. Told her this as we sat listening to music. Worried she couldn’t possibly love such a coward. But she wasn’t even listening. Hair still on the carpet and waving her head back and forth. Eyes rolled backwards. Not seeing anything, especially me. 

Originals 

Part 1: Prologue 

My Nan was on the radio when she was a kid. She’d won a contest. Wrote a story about someone named Miss McGee. How she got a wart on her nose. When I got older, and she got me angry, I would remind her that this was her life’s greatest accomplishment. 

“Boy, I sure wish I wrote something like that”, I’d yell at her, then slam my bedroom door. Start typing loud enough so she could hear me downstairs. Loud enough so she might worry I was writing about her.  

I could spend many hours at a time on my typewriter. Get thirsty I’d type so much. Eyeballs drying. Back aching. Hitting those keys as heavily as I could. My fingers slipping between them and cutting and bleeding. Words and words and words and exclamation marks and sometimes bad words. 

One day while I was at school, she found a copy of Miss McGee and the Wart on Her Nose in the basement. The great prizewinner. The original copy. The papers were yellow and it was handwritten. When I got home told me she left it on my desk if I wanted to read it. See what all the hubbub had been about. Then gave me a lunch I barely ate. 
 
I remember her story sitting there for a long time. Sometimes reading a few words from the corner of my eyes but hating her handwriting and not reading much. Writing my own stuff next to it instead.  

And then one day it was gone. When I asked her where it went she wouldn’t give me a straight answer. 

“That’s not the title”, was all she would say. “Stop calling it that” 

I had no idea what she was getting so upset about. I just wanted her to know I had planned to read it. She shouldn’t have taken it away. Slammed my door. Started typing. Finger scabs breaking and bleeding all over again.  

Part 2: The Kids With the Trembling Hands 

Older kids would come to our classrooms and talk to us about chocolate or dogs or how much they hated their brothers and sisters. Their hands shaking as they stood in front of us. Peeking at cards to remember what to say next. The kind of thing that made me not trust them. Made me wonder who sent them here with these lies. Whose stories they were really telling. 

Not that I listened too closely. The look in their eyes made me uncomfortable. They didn’t want to be up there. Didn’t want our attention. Someone had forced them to do this. Some terrible person, possibly involved in the business of chocolate preparation. Or maybe the ranking of dogs from smartest to dumbest. It was possible these were even messages from trapped children. Those who had been forced to push a chair against their bedroom door to keep their horrible brother from getting in, and who now had no way to get out. Slid this secret message beneath the door. Hoping for someone to find it and read it aloud and get someone, anyone, to rescue them.  

But I didn’t listen to these kids with the trembling hands. They weren’t saying anything that was true. I stared out the window and pretended they weren’t there. Thought about the villains who were somewhere else. Thought about murder. 

When I was told it would be our turn to do the same thing next year, at first I said that couldn’t be possible. Then grew very quiet when everyone said it was true. Became all too aware of how I had nothing to say to anyone. Might never speak again. 

From then on, I began looking towards my feet as I walked around town, hoping to find someone’s story laying somewhere down there. Something I could pretend was mine. Something I could transcribe onto little cards I could hold in my hands.  

They had already begun to shake.  

Part 4: What a Goal! 

I made the mistake of being interesting. They can’t keep ignoring you once you get their attention. They ask you to repeat yourself. Send you to other classrooms with other kids and get you to tell them too. Introduce you like you’ve got something special to say.

That’s what you get for talking about monsters. 

Should have found someone else from Helsinki to talk about instead. But all year long my father had teased me about that. Kept asking what I’d been thinking. How I could get up in front of people and talk to them about something no one could possibly care about. Asked to be reminded how my speech began, getting him to howl with laughter every time I recited it back from memory. 

“What a goal! What a game! What a year for Jari Kurri” 

“Great stuff, kid. Great stuff. They must have been chasing you like you were The Beatles after that one” 

Sometimes he’d recite it himself if he caught me writing somewhere by myself. 

“What a goal! What a game! What a year for hahahahahahaha” 

So the next year I got up there and talked about Loch Ness and all of its problems with monsters. This time something I cared about. And, as it turned out, also something kids listen to. That got applause. That got me in this predicament of having to read it over and over and over again to more and more of them. My hands perpetually sweating. My cue cards perpetually damp. 

But thankfully, when it came to the dusty teachers sitting at the back of every classroom, they always preferred the girl who came with me to talk about Time Zones. That one got them tapping their feet. Quizzing her if she knew what time it was in Calgary at that moment. Or maybe even Helsinki. And she always knew and they always smiled at how quickly she answered. 

I never stood a chance. My monster talk clearly made them uncomfortable. They seemed to think I was on the monsters side. That I was hoping people would eventually get eaten. Even though I never said such a thing, they must have seen a gleam in my eye. Got a bad taste in their mouth and not liked me so much. 

But that was okay. Whatever helped me losing to Mary and her times zones was fine by me. She could read in front of the whole school if it was that important to her. Which it clearly was. Just like it was important for me to be out there in the gymnasium audience, listening to her, and all the other champions, not having to talk about the Loch Ness Monster ever again, slowly getting covered in dust. 

Part 6: The Uninviteable  

My grandmother had been listening all along. All my birthday party hate. Explanations of why I should stay home while she led me to them like a guillotine. Explanations leading to complaints then to me hitting trees with sticks. Everything I said and did reasonable enough and worth considering. But always forced to honor these little invitations that came in little envelopes. Passed to me at recess or sometimes mailed to my home. Nan holding my hand all the way to their door. Making sure I went inside. 

A slice of cake would be waiting for me, she was sure to remind. Placed exactly in the spot my head would be cut off if I dared bend over to eat it. Getting pushed towards it. Into a stranger's home. 

But first a pizza with terrible things on top. That I couldn’t believe children had asked for. Then games that made me touch classmates I had never talked to. Roll around on lawns with them. Games I wouldn’t even try to win in case it made the birthday kid cry. Would have to give them the prize anyways and they’d just stand there holding a plastic trophy with tears in their eyes and I’d start hating them even more. 

And then the gifts. The things my grandmother got for me to bring. Old lady presents for breakdancers. Always jewelry for girls. Horse racing memorabilia for boys. Making all the girls think I was in love with them. Making all the boys worry they had mistakenly invited some creepy old man to their party. Looking around for the culprit. The wrinkled old thing in boy shorts. But I was already hiding in the basement. Listening for the sounds of their disappointment. Waiting until I could return upstairs, unseen. 

I would tell my grandmother everything that had happened. I would tell her it was as bad as I had told her it would be. Tired, shamed, embarrassed, hungry, bruised, dented, grass in my teeth. Her not even looking at me. Asking if her present had been appreciated. If I had told the parents thank you. 

I suppose it would have been better if she hadn’t listened. Then she couldn’t have filled my typewriter with all my complaining. The things I told her in secret, that I didn’t even know were secret while I had yelled them at her in the middle of the street. But she had now thought everyone should hear. That she put into her own words, and  was now getting excited to send me up in front of my class to read to them. 

She told me it was a winner. Told me this was radio worthy. Hinting that, if I just stopped yelling at her and resisting and being such a child, if I just listened to her and read it as it had been written, and didn’t change a single thing, and spoke clearly, didn’t ruin it with my mumbling, then maybe, just maybe, I’d never get another birthday party invitation the rest of my life. 

And now, suddenly, I was listening.  

Part 8: Not Such a Good Place 

I came in third place. 

Even though there were only six of us. And third out of six was hardly worth talking about, I came in third place. 

Even though I just kept sitting there as if the judges hadn’t already called my name, before they were supposed to be calling my name, I came in third place and not moving didn’t change that. 

I guess everyone in the schoolyard didn’t know what they were talking about after all. 

They all came to me. The dorks and the bullies. The snowfort kickers and the kids looking for dinosaur bones. Even the girls who shouldn’t have seen me at all. All hunting me down as I waited outside for the judges to decide who was the best. Each one wanting to make sure I knew I was.  

But I came in third place anyways and so all of them were wrong. None of them should have come anywhere near me. 

On stage, I sat next to first place. Fat girl with one eyebrow. Talked about her brother. A real nuisance, but who she loved anyways. 

I also sat next to second place. Skinny girl with frizzy hair. Talked about her brother. A real nuisance, but who she loved anyways. 

Was sitting right between them when I got third place. And as the judges kept calling my name, it was only then I remembered I had a brother too.

A first place nuisance, I’m sure.

Three years old and already losing his teeth. Three years old and already smashing my mothers wedding ring with a hammer. 

Those girls were lucky I'd forgotten about him 

Kept sitting. 

3 THINGS NEEDED WHILE LOOKING FOR A HOME (by accident)

Thing 1: A Terrible Fathers Day Card

I would see my mother every second weekend.  

Sometimes she’d be living on the couches of my cousins, who lived down hallways spattered in the blood of the black men who were getting shot every second weekend.  

Sometimes it was in the basements of strangers. Then, when she married a stranger upstairs, it was up there I would be twice a month. Him and me and his constantly squeaking nose having to watch movies I chose where people kept getting murdered. My mother trying to bond us together. Forced him to sit in the room with me, probably wondering if I wanted to be a murderer too. Why I kept looking at him like that. 

I don’t remember my father in those earliest years. He says he was around, but I only remember a few fleeting moments of him sitting on couches without a shirt. Every once and awhile he would phone me and talk to me. Other times my grandmother would make me call him myself. Never knew where he was when I was talking to him. 

Eventually he started coming around though. After work, sitting at the kitchen table and smoking. His jean jacket smelling of beer. Losing his housekeys in the snow when he left. Having to come back and crawl around our frozen lawn on his hands and knees, looking for them. Otherwise, he couldn’t get home, wherever that was. 

Both gave me big feelings whenever I thought of them. But I would keep these to myself when they were with me. When they could see me and kept remembering my name and telling me to come with them where they were going. Never knew how to say anything right about how they made me feel. Not sure if I actually wanted them to know me. Always sad when they disappeared again. 

It was school that finally made me say all the important things that needed to be said. Got me sitting at my desk making mother’s and Father's Day cards. Finding some way to say what I didn’t know how to say. Breaking crayons in my hand as I drew them. 

On Mother's Day, a drawing of me hanging from my neck from a tree. Gave it to my mother in her tiny blue car when she picked me up from school. Told her to read what it said. 

“I couldn’t live in a world without you”, it said. 

She went ‘awwwwwww’, then drove out into the highway and started screaming at Asians.  

On Father's Day, I made him a card that I still have in a box in the basement. I guess he never took it with him. Can still remember drawing it. But never why or what it means. A mystery that sometimes makes me laugh, and sometimes makes me anxious.  

Happy Father’s Day! A giant mouse crashing through a wall, standing in a puddle of blood. A few scrawled words that let my father know what he meant to me. Making him promises to cut firewood for him. That he didn’t need to catch butterflies anymore. And up in the corner, written backwards, a poem. About his ugly face. Or maybe my ugly face.  

But I know I loved him. As much as any blood drenched mouse possibly could. As much as anyone would love a father who was always somewhere else, presumably chasing butterflies. 

* 

My grandmother would sometimes ask me where her card was. Wanted to know what she got. 

“You’re not my mother”, I’d tell her, then start looking around the kitchen for potato chips. Turn the radio she was listening to off. Burp loudly and leave the room. 

Thing 2 (continued)

I didn’t go to Herman's funeral. Didn’t even consider going. Instead, sat writing a tribute to him as they were burying him somewhere. In the ground of some other city he had moved to since I last saw him.  

When people die the only thing that matters anymore is what you say about them. So I wrote something and took a lot of time on it. 

Probably talked about how I didn’t really know him that well. But how I spent one summer with him, every single day. And how no matter how fast I walked, there he always was, waddling right next to me. 

Wrote about hitting him when he beat me at Trivial Pursuit and wouldn’t stop talking about it. 

Or hitting him when I brought the wrong potato chips back from the store and he wouldn’t stop talking about it. 

Hitting him when he kept calling me Bilbo Baggins whenever he saw my bare feet, black from alleys and sidewalks and sleeping in bushes. My feet, he said, looking just as awful as Hobbit feet. 

“Hey, Bilboooooooo”, resounding through the house, whenever I lost my socks. “Bilbooooo Baaaagins” 

An entirely eulogy about hitting this man who died in his sleep. Hitting him in the chest with my fists.

Him always responding, “Yo, boy, what was that for”?

And then me hitting him again. 

I wrote something about him as beautiful as I knew how. Something that was honest and full of love. Put it on the computer, to be read by probably nobody.  

But one person did. Read it and somehow understood I was trying to be beautiful. Not just mean but beautiful. Told me Herman sounded like a beautiful person and it seemed like a beautiful friendship. 

“Not really”, I wrote back. “He was okay” 

Just some girl I didn’t know, who quickly requested to be my friend. Wanted more stories.  

And there were so many stories.  '

Like the time I discovered Herman had been living in an old age home in Miami. The last time I would talk to him. Dropping acid and wandering the hallways in his sandals and shorts. Playing chess with dementia patients. Not yet 40 years old, but still living that good Herman life. 

Just him and Ruthie and Vera and Bernie against the world.  

And now me, with a new friend too. 

So, thanks Herman. You died at exactly the right moment. For once, not an inconvenience. So don’t let any of those other awful roommates ever tell you differently.  

You were the champ. 

Sorry about the punching.

Jinnistan wrote:

Loving all of this new material.

Thanks.

They are still mostly coming pretty free and easy without too much anxiety over whether I have to do more or less with them. Some probably work. Some probably don't. And it's fine to leave it like that. All they need be are documents of the headspace I was in when writing them. Sort of like literary telephone doodles. Then I move on and forget them, which seems to be a good way to not sabotage myself by trying to figure out what their ultimate purpose is. Tinkering and editing and over thinking to get them 'just right'. Because who cares. I've just got to keep moving forward.

I've now just passed the mark of 100 pages, which for me is quite the accomplishment. To not get bored of something or frustrated to the point of helplessness and abandon it is a rarity for me. But there is some anxiety attached with this particular accomplishment, as I've had this number of pages in mind for awhile now.. I thought that it would be around this point where I'd see a way to frame all of these disembodied memories. But nope.  I still have zero clue what I'm doing when it comes to a bigger picture. Probably partially because I don't want the restrictions of having a 'point', because then it might seem like work. But I also know at some point, even though I don't want to, I have to decide on some kind of shape for this sprawling mess. What kind of suitcase to pack it in.

Or, maybe I should just take comfort in the notion that something like Naked Lunch wasn't structured in any conventional sense. Burroughs apparently put his chapters in random sequencing (after also writing them out of order). So it's not impossible to do something of some value that doesn't have an established or set form. But, at least Burroughs had the benefit of a fairly well conceived idea of the fictional world he was trying to describe. And what the world had to say about the world he believed we were really living in. Which is something I've yet to get much of a handle on, since I'm basically making fiction out of real life events, but that I don't really want to treat as real life events. So my brain instinctively wants to put them in a chronological order, and wants to force me to define this world as the one I actually lived in, but I don't know if that's exactly what I want out of this. I feel  I need to resist those impulses to some extent. That, even though its all very much based on the minutia of my life, that it isn't really about my life. It's more about anxiety and dread and love and beauty and confusion and mystery and the emotionally tactile things that represent any life.

Or something like that.

Oh, well, At least it's been a consistent distraction that makes me feel like I've done something with my day. Even though I'm not entirely sure what it is I've done.

 

crumbsroom wrote:

Or, maybe I should just take comfort in the notion that something like Naked Lunch wasn't structured in any conventional sense. Burroughs apparently put his chapters in random sequencing (after also writing them out of order). So it's not impossible to do something of some value that doesn't have an established or set form.

I may be wrong, but I believe that while Burroughs did compile a huge folder of these disconnected sketches, Naked Lunch was the more formal attempt at finding a precise representation of the overall vision, and received editing advice from friends like Ginsberg and Gysin.  The more random "cut-up" method was only applied to the rest, for the remaining novels Soft Machine, Nova Express and Ticket That Exploded.

But there's a clear throughline in your pieces that even a randomness wouldn't dilute.  It would be an interesting question of arranging a sequencing, which is always a daunting undertaking, similar maybe to the sequencing involved with an album, and sometimes the more experimental films (like Kubrick's decision to stick the end of Lolita at the very beginning of the film).

THING 3: THE END OF THE WORLD 

When the world suddenly seems to be ending, and you are in a new city, standing in the kitchen of someone you’ve just met, you too might be unafraid to ask if you should even go home again. Somehow hopeful this stranger might not see any reason for you to ever leave either.  

A place I’d only driven past. The black smoke and flames kept you moving. The whole city vibrating with the sound of handblistering furnaces. A sense it didn’t want visitors with a flank of factories standing guard on its waterfront. Like a battalion of twenty-story high tanks. So big you’d think giants were inside, burning piles of bones. 

“It’s the shits”, was how those who had escaped it, described it. Every single one of them “It’s the shits. Don’t go there” 

But now watching the news and bodies piling up in the streets. All over the world. It was getting bad. Might soon never be allowed outside again. Loneliness never more terrifying. Things definitely coming to an end and not sure what was back at home for me anyways. Nothing that couldn’t be left there, I’m sure. Nothing that would want to leave such a good city. Not for this one that had been set on fire and turning to ash for so long it didn't even notice the rest of the world was burning now too. 

“Should I even go back?”

“I don’t think so. It would be good if you stayed”, she said. “If that’s what you want” 

I probably laughed. How could I not. The sun slowly being blotted out from the sky and everything suddenly perfect.