Fools 1f5h4y

Fools

Book 1

KOL

Copyright © 2012 by K• ol.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012920410 ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4797-4216-5 Softcover 978-1-4797-4215-8 Ebook 978-1-4797-4217-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 02/23/2013

To order additional copies of this book, : Xlibris Corporation 1-888-795-4274 www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

6581

Spiel One

6397

6427

Spiel Two

6469

6481

6491

6529

6551

6553

656 J

6571

6577

Spiel Three

658¹⁴²

6599

Epilogue

Musings, Cadenzas, Pornographies and Philosophical Ramblings

Journal

Christopher

Ana

Bami

Hodge

Hannah

The Garden

Carnival: An Act of Parallel Processing

“Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow— You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream.”

—Poe

6581

Mother says it plainly . . . something about Savannah. I drop the pen where the denim wrinkles on the upper left thigh, which I assign the human quality of a deeply furrowed brow. The pen rolls back and forth—once, twice, like a pendulum. Young, beautifully haunting, she spellbinds me—her son, her unsuspecting audience—with the cryptic eloquence of her abrupt simplicity. Having spoken, she disconnects as if we have nothing else to talk about; so I rehearse her statement, not what she says, but how she says it, something of an interjection, but easily, almost casual, like the random escape of a subconscious idea. It’s how she takes me unawares, in the way of gunshots, advancing on my world even as she retreats into her own; and it’s how, once returned to herself, she stares into the distance. “What’s that?” I ask, blinking. It’s hard to hear the simple things. Mother’s voice echoes through me, and although it resonates like a song, it does so wordlessly, humming a tune that’s catchier than the lyrics. She swings on a porch swing, and as she drapes forward, a golden stab of lamplight reveals her far eye, ring-of-sapphire, spotlighted in the dark of her face. Her motion, swayful, becomes the stroke of an old bell— tongueless, as I forge it—ringing in the ruins of a clock tower; the tricks of a wind sound the hauntings of its chime. I look to her because she might speak again, preferring to watch her lips when they mouth her words, to read them like captions, but she stares through me, or over a sweep of matter, onto the next thought while I’m still lost in sixty seconds ago. “Savannah,” I think she says. “Yea?” I ask. “What about it?” “The fair,” I assume she says. She says something about the fair. “Laissez-faire? Savoir-faire? Farewell?” I ask. “Or do you mean carnival?”

From elsewhere, she speaks. “My dream.” “Are you listening?” I ask. “I dropped out of school. I bought a one-way ticket to Lima.” Mother isn’t here right now. The wind blows through her hair, and she observes her winter breath; while deeply I inhale, flaring nostrils in the cool dead of February. Carnival, says a voice. What to do about carnival? Another asks: What about Bami and Ana? Visualizing first Ana, her smile, then Bami, his grin, I look them in the eyes, and say: “I can lie like you can now.” Plucking the pen from the lap, and applying it to my unlined journal, I scrawl letters into words that scratch over paper, each sentence punctuated by a long and vacant pause. Wantingly, I write.J1

Spiel One

6397

This moment is a juncture of minds. I reread the italics and close the schoolbook, thumbing at its deckle edge as I lean back in the desk chair. My thoughts blur musingly, looking left, right, through the windows, to either side of Lafayette Square. I spin round, tapping the schoolbook on a thigh as I inspect the Room for Improvement, recently rearranged. The harpsichord—a sort of keyboard playing at a piano—now centers the back wall, and bookshelves sideline the flanks; in each corner roosts a wingback chair, perched there like large birds of prey. The desk behind me clutters with pens and doodles, its length jammed into the width between two window frames. Above it, nailed to the white-brick wall, hangs an upside-down world map, titled: Perspective. “Bami?” I ask, through the door, startled by the metallic clamor of kitchenware. “It isn’t me.” “You just told me it’s you.” “Don’t tell me you’re stupid,” he says. “I said it isn’t me.” “Right,” I say, as Hodge, my twin, appears in the doorway, peeking into the dining hall. “The implication of the voice contradicts the explication of its statement,” says Hodge, methodically, so his words don’t jumble up. “I don’t believe we phished a pirate.” “Yes, it’s obviously Bami,” I say, as Hodge gumshoes down the hall. The garden plays a song, and when aromas cook up, I waft into the kitchen, narrow and rectangular, dodging Bami as he whips about and forages for breakfast items; still wearing his backpack, he oils pans, invents recipes and estimates measurements all slapdash. In the bathroom, through the widely open door, Hodge grips a novel close to his face, squinting in the dim light. He has no

idea that he is standing at the toilet reading a book with his penis hanging out, tucked over the lip of his boxers. Hodge has no idea because he forgets himself. “Proofread my paper,” says Bami, jabbing me with a folder. “Sure,” I say, cutting across the kitchen and into the living room. The front door is open and I stand in the doorsill, wiggling the toes over pavement as pedestrians drop off snippets of conversation, their volumes drowned out by the frequency of motorcars. It’s August in Savannah, and I perspire in the unnatural heat of sunrise. A breeze, light and warm, blows cool as it tousles the hair. Breathing deep, I grin involuntarily, a smile which, accentuated by my low and quaking laughter, is widened by a much deeper breath that yawns, so that I stretch out the arms and bearhug the day. Excellent, I mouth, refreshed, waking up early after nights drinking late. I feel like the night owl who gets the worm. I wipe the forehead, flick off the early-morning sweat and stroll half a block down Abercorn Street. Across Lafayette, the Cathedral of St. John towers high above the foliage, and the elderly gather on the front steps, gossiping before daily mass. Cupping a handful of water from the public fountain, crisp and splashing, I dig out the sleep, walking circles around the square. Streets feed into and wind around it like a large traffic rotary, or the quads that center small college campuses—used for recreating outdoors, and as village greens for social functions: weddings, luncheons and impromptu gatherings. Outlined by the high-rise of old mansions and townhomes, there are no horizons to speak of but for the escape of roads into the spaces between buildings, ageways that lead to other grassy commons. Savannah’s squares are orderly scenes of constant locomotion, but illustrate a sylvan quality foreign to most downtown settings, reminding me of those weird silences while walking in the woods, when it is dusk and there are shadows. Lafayette itself is light and shady beneath its arbor ceiling of oak leaf, tree limb, and Spanish moss. Here is a city in the underbrush, everywhere water-colored with beige, brick, and the deep-vivid forestry of greens and browns; where the colors are dream-quality, as if intensified by an incorporate darkness. Chewing on it, searching for that elusive sense of white, I discover it to be physically

imperceptible; rather, detected in how the scenery reacts with the atmosphere, seen in the lighting, in the air. Nearly half a foot over six feet, Bami crosses into the square, shouldering a tray with the veteran ease of a cocktail waiter. He chews on a pancake, whole, his cheeks squirrely and puffed with excess, and smiles outrageously, moving into the crumble that dribbles from his mouth. He is a specimen of lean magnitude, and his footsteps fall softer than snow, melting into the ground like snowflakes on a warm and out-stuck tongue. He walks with an athletic bounce, ever directional, swift and lengthy, almost bobbing on the balls of his feet; it’s as if each stride is an act of defiance against gravity, so that one suspects he might break into a moonhop down the sidewalk, or take to the air to cross a busy road. Bami snaps his fingers where he taps them against his thigh, directing me, with his gaze, to the point of its fixity—an attractive woman filing up Abercorn, ing through Lafayette. Bright with sex, he smiles unabashedly, but she is a deflector, blushing as she counts her own footsteps; perhaps she thinks that her shoes require attention, the shoestrings loose and dragging on the brick; but no, they are heels she wears, not shoes, although there might be a scuff in the polish; now checking her blouse for wrinkles, then rummaging her waistline, sucking in, tucking her shirttail in tight and form-fitting. The while Bami stares, aware of how he unnerves her with his uncommon penetration, teasing the sensibilities of the criminally sane. “Sex on heels,” he says, as she es. He sucks through his teeth. “Or is it hell on wheels?” I ask. “It looks like she’s getting away.” “She’ll be back,” he says. “Planet Earth is a gnarly spheroid.” I laugh. “The Earth may be spheroidal, but illusions make the world go round.” Bami, however, has diverted his attention to the Suites on Lafayette, where Mother sits on the balcony above the Garden apartment. “Your mom is a goddess,” he says, casually informative.

“She doesn’t know you exist.” “Come on, she knows,” he says, confident in this knowledge. “No,” I say, considering it. “I don’t think so.” And laughing, I ask: “I don’t want you to think these things bother me, as I’m purely curious, but would you dislike it if I broke into your house every morning, left the door open, ate your food and cooked breakfast for your mom?” “Oh, right,” I say. “I always . . . I forgot.” “Forget it,” he says, waving me off. “Yea, but circumstantially, that was borderline distasteful.” “Don’t bewilder me with Oliver Twist,” he says. “I’m absurdly rich.” Abruptly, Bami cuts through the square, trots up the front steps and enters the Suites; he picks the lock to Mother’s apartment and ducks onto the balcony through a tall, single-hung window. Curtains billow out after him, and he sets breakfast for two, talking and eating while she stares off; cold but blissful, perceptive yet nonresponsive. “Tybee?” I ask Hodge, as he s me at the fountain. “I prefer not to skip school today,” he says. “The beach will be empty,” I say, dangling the words as if selling a vacation. “Why do you hate school?” he asks. “Because the formal education system is starving,” I say. “Teachers will eat your brains.” “Our teachers are zombies?” he asks. “Yes,” I say. “If you think you’re prepared for zombies, you aren’t prepared for zombies. But come to think of it, what if you had a reason to skip school?” “I don’t have a reason,” says Hodge.

“Wait, you don’t know?! There’s a lecture on quantum mechanics today at Tybee.” I jump up and pat around the pockets, feeling for car keys. “It starts at nine on the pier! Let’s go!” “Liquid crystal!” he says excitedly, but shows the evidence of indecision, weighing the pros and cons of either/or. Excitement falling, he asks: “James, are you spoofing me?” “Yes,” I say. He consults the sky. “I’m going to school now.” “But it’s only seven,” I say. He reads his watch. “The position of the sun disproves the accuracy of my timepiece.” “Dammit, you caught me,” I say, laughing. “I dialed it back an hour.” “Why do you recursively infect me with malware?” he asks. “Stop talking like you’re a computer.” Hodge frowns and walks to the car, waiting for Bami, who snags a pancake from Mother’s plate and folds it twice into a wedge. It drizzles with butter-freckled maple syrup, catching the drippage with his mouth as he waits for her to acknowledge his departure, but she doesn’t see him, and he hops off the balcony, driving off. Having nestled into the roots of a tree, I flip through my journal, reflecting on ages of who I am on other days; at times a person I recognize, at others, someone with whom I fail to identify. To my rear creeps a vehicle through the square, heard in the soft purr of its engine, and the report of tires over twigs and grass. I conceal a grin when Bami pulls up beside me. “No!” I say, as he jumps out. I juke like squirrels, suddenly run upon, but he picks me up and wrestles me into the enger seat. A magazine falls onto the lap, which I toss back onto the dashboard. “Well, when you put it that way,” I say, handing him his essay.

“Now get out,” he says, collating a sheaf of classy nudes: Renaissance paintings, Greek statues, Incan erotica. He holds up two printouts. “Aphrodite of Milos or Headless Aphrodite?” “The beheaded,” I say. “Road rager,” he says, ogling. “Imagination trumps porn.” “If you expected me not to come, then why did you force me in the car?” I ask. “Because it was hilarious.” “Actually, I’m coming,” I say, barefoot. “But I think I burned my shoes last night.” “All of them,” he says, laughing. “It was butchery.” Rolling down the window, Bami smiles hugely at bystanders. “Check it,” he says, “the sheep.” “I know,” I say, eyes downcast. “Everyone is staring.”

. . .

“I believe you are draining my power supply,” says Hodge, implying that I should sleep because just looking at me is making him tired. “You need ten hours of power sleep per night for optimal cognitive processing.” “You’re an analytical engine,” I say, “but I disagree,” dropping the forehead to the table, drifting off, semiaware of erratic activity in and out of subconscious terrain. “This is a wakeup call!” says Bami, slamming the table. “What the—” I say, groggy-eyed.

“Please tell me you napped through two lunches,” he says, sitting. I faceplant the tabletop, groaning. “Life’s so hard when you’re seventeen,” he says, patting me on the back. “Wait, where’s your halfwit?” I ask, glancing up. “Johnny favors Court Jester, but you can call him Wizardly Quipster.” “Hey, Shakespeare wrote,” I say. “He wants his fool back.” “Don’t hate me because I’m a visionary,” says Bami. “But wake up, because the new girls are certified vintage.” “New girls?” I ask. “Come on, you solitaire, the social curve,” he says. “I swear you’re a prokaryote.” “Untrue.” “And by prokaryote I meant faggot.” “Also untrue.” “Specify one time you gave a damn for a girl,” he says. “Asha Greyjoy.” “Not applicable.” “How come?” I ask. “Because Asha Greyjoy is a fictional character.” “How do you know?” “Because her name is Asha-fucking-Greyjoy.” “Fine, but don’t let her fictional qualities undermine her realness,” I say,

frowning. “It doesn’t change how I feel about her.” “Let’s hear it, real girls.” “Joelle van Dyne and Holly Golightly.” “One, they’re mine,” he says. “Two, not fucking applicable.” “Fine, Lili. She’s the real mean reds.” “Come on, you’re inventing first names.” “Amanda.” “Sex isn’t giving a damn,” he says, impatiently. “It is, kind of . . . if you give her a damming?” “Buttfuck it,” he says. “You don’t give a damn for games, girls—nothing.” “No, I do,” I say. “Don’t you dare say Lady Montagu,” he says. “I told you, she’s mine.” Bami looks around the cafeteria and clucks his tongue. “Hannah Warlock,” he says. “The furtive minx, check her checking you out.” “I don’t know,” I say. “She’s too innocent.” “Fuck-ably innocent,” he says, looking to where she hunches over a book in the corner, hyperextending her double-ted elbows, sitting on her hands. A mane of caramel locks tangles about her face—attractive in that racy, provocative charm that naivety exudes when the naïve person is sexually stimulating. Hannah, I think; reclusive actor, renowned bookworm, notoriously indefinite. Bami laughs. “Big tits, bookish bedroom eyes, and that hourglass waist—mmm, look at it. Better than a fucking corset.” “Does Johnny know you dream-boff his sister?” I ask.

“Ruin her or I will ruin her in your name,” he says. “By ruin do you mean deflower?” I ask. “I’m not—” “I will ruin her in your name,” he says. “Okay, I know what you’re talking about, but I have no idea what you’re trying to say.” “Basically, you don’t want to know,” he says. “But I like the sound of christen.” He subtitles the air with hands like revelation: “The Christener.” “Yea, no, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Sex,” he says, as the bell rings. “Don’t miss English or I’ll sick Mrs. Ramblin on you.” “That’s a terrible idea,” I say. “She’ll petition for my expulsion again.” He thinks about it. “No, rewind, do miss English—because that was cinematic.”

. . .

“But I’m the night owl who gets the worm!” I say, escorted briskly out of the cafeteria. Mrs. Ramblin steers me into the front office and commands me to sit as she confers with the secretary. She takes a seat beside me and crosses her legs, convinced I’m high on marijuana. Irresistibly, I laugh to myself, to which she glares. “Mrs. Ramblin,” I say, for the hell of it. “The b is silent,” she hisses. “Silent.” “So you’re not a Ramblin’ man?” I ask.

“Silent! Silent B!” “Oh, silent bee,” I say. “Like, without the bzzzzzzz.” “God help you, boy, the rot that comes from out your mouth. It makes me believe, no, no, it benumbs me to wonder why you don’t fail.” “Where’s the rest of our class?” I ask. “You content yourself now with you and me.” “Okay, but I’m trying to understand what’s happening here. You abandoned your classroom because I was missing and went out in search of me. Why? It wasn’t to bring me back to the flock, to speak your language, or else we’d be in class, learning, instead of in the office. It’s more like you want to expel me from the flock. Do you have it out for me? And if so, why? I’m not trying to piss you off. I’m not going out of my way to disrespect you. And I wasn’t sleeping in the cafeteria because I’m high on marijuana. Although, I am messed up on sleeplessness and an excess of verisimilar drugs: like thinking, and related misuses of the brain. “This is about that persuasive speech you assigned last year. Let me off this once and I’ll write an essay in defense of religion and deliver it to the class. I’m not saying I’ll believe it, but neither am I saying that I believed what I promulgated last year. It was an assignment. I didn’t mean to turn anyone into an atheist, as I’m agnostic myself; well, ignostic, but agnostic in general, as I don’t have a point of view. I mean, I do—but I’d never let on. As for my speech, I contended against religion because my argument was logically probable, highly controversial, and liable to make people think. I thought it was fair to present both sides of the issue, or is fair and balanced news just a catchphrase you people use?” She glares, and I say: “Jk-joking! Funny. That was a funny.” “I aimed to save you,” she says, looking me over with prudence, the face of conservative disgust. “I aimed to show you God’s way. We’re all called to lead a meaningful life on this earth. The problem with you godless folk is you ask so many questions you don’t know how to ask for answers.” I stand and pace. “If I understand you correctly, your definition of godless is

happiness without a cause. Why? Life is absurd. Absurdities without explanations are like random, causeless pleasures—they feel good, and they make you laugh, but you can’t say why. Besides, if parents wanted to be like God, they would let their children do what they wanted. That goes for teachers, too. God gave us free will, right? To figure life out for ourselves? But you Abrahamic caregivers go out of your way to be unlike God. Why not present children with two slabs of stone inscribed with ten commandments and abandon them to free will? You do want to emulate God, right, as he’s the moral apex, or so I hear? Oh, and I have a question: Do you ever feel as if he is simply observing us? You know, that God is a people-watcher or something?” Mrs. Ramblin speaks, is speaking, has spoken. After a silence, she concludes: “God doesn’t lead a horse to water and not allow it to eat its fruit.” “Wait, what?!” I ask. “Why is there fruit in the water? Is the horse bobbing for apples?” “Clearly you haven’t been touched by Jesus.” “Actually, Jesus dandled me chastely on his knee, once. Well, to clarify, it was a priest named Jesus—Jesús if you translate it to the Mexican.” Mrs. Ramblin crosses her arms, making it apparent that she doesn’t negotiate with high school terrorists of the irreligious variety. “All kidding aside, I know you think I’m a heathen, but that’s not what I’m after. I don’t think I’m privileged, special, above your command or any such probable misconception. I just, I don’t know, it’s the system. School’s difficult.” “James Christopher,” says the secretary. “Mr. Naps will see you now.” Opening the door to the back offices, I turn to Mrs. Ramblin, pronounce her name properly, and say: “I do want to believe in something, but I won’t make it easy for myself.” The principal closes the door and speaks at length until I headnod, sitting me back in the front office. “You’re a bright young man,” he says. “You think about that in detention.” I’m pacing, thinking, wondering what I’m not doing and why I’m not doing it

when a girl enters the front office. Redness flashes and I am brutally introduced to the headfuck moment of: To take one’s breath away. It’s the aha! experience of a cliché, when it clicks for the first time. And I try to catch my breath, breathe —staring because she’s holding open the door to the back offices, paused there, likewise staring; but reality plays us and suddenly it’s double time, moving through each other in a whirligig of impressions. Then pacing more fiercely I gesticulate and swear in repetitive malfunction: what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. Spellbound by an incantation of mechanical overload, that of dysfunctional technologies, I smoke like short-circuit. Wetted computer chips. Coffee on the circuit board. Mindless F4. The while repeating: what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. “Okay,” I say, exhaling slowly, closing the eyes in order to visualize the qualia of her features. I picture her eyeful smile, but the rest of her eludes me like the contents of a dream. The rest of her, I think, as if the whole consists in the remainder. Abdominally I breathe as the munchiest sensation starves me, fully gastric, as if a host of minified bakers are frantically whisking batter in the hollow of my vacuum. “The butterflies,” I say, naming the sensation. “We meet at last.” The secretary shushes me, disapproving of students who talk to themselves. “Do you know her name?” I ask, pointing to the door. “That girl? No? Shit. Okay, she’s tall, right? With olive skin . . . and hair, she has dark brunette hair. What else will they need? Ah, yes. Her eyes are motes of hazel—muddy waters topped with lily pads.” “Wait,” I tell myself. “What is this? Fuck, what’s happening.” Emotionally incontinent, I pace. Abnormal behavior. I like abnormal. Yes, abnormal is good. Abnormal is out of the ordinary. Abnormal is new. “The new girl!” I say, running out of the front office and up the main hall, drifting into a side hall, slamming into a row of lockers and exploding into English.

“The new girl,” I say, appealing to Bami. “The tall brunette. What’s her name?” He smirks, and Mrs. Ramblin has me by the underarm carting me down the hall. “Mrs. Ramblin, seriously. Let me go and I’ll recommend my own expulsion. Better yet, I won’t show up. Expulsion by default. Final ? No? No?! What do you mean, no?!” Mrs. Ramblin wheels me into the principal’s office, and I’m vis-à-vis with the tall brunette. “Your name,” I say. “My expulsion is imminent, but tell me your name.” “Ana,” she says, smiling oddly, almost blushing. “I’m James,” I say. “But they call me Christopher.” “Christopher,” she says; her syllables sing like songbirds. “I’ll call you Christopher.” “This might sound like a strange question, but do you spell your name with one n or two? I have to see it or I won’t know exactly how to think about you. Not properly.” “One n.” Lost to a silence between us, we’re semiaware of Mrs. Ramblin’s stuttering. “This, this deviant has interrupted my class for the final time. Action must be taken against his clinical disregard for authority. It must, must be fixed.” As Ana and I stare, self-absorbed, Mrs. Ramblin persists in denouncing me, so that a festoon of her single-serving adjectives decorates our eyebrows: “disrespectful,” and “ungrateful,” and “insurrectionary.” We snort-burst, stifling our laughter. “I doubt this qualifies as an insurrection,” I say. “I didn’t mean—” But her adjectives continue. “Hopeless,” and “quarrelsome,” and “rebellious.” “I’m not rebellious,” I say, hearing some of what follows.

“He undermines my . . . the leader of a devil-worshiping movement—” “Mr. Principle,” I say, diplomatically. “Please expel me, but I am definitely not the leader of any movement.” The principal ahems and says: “Mr. Naps.” Nodding, I backpedal slowly, and look to Ana. “Now that I know your name—” I run out, back to the classroom. “I’d go home, but you’re my ride,” I say, addressing Bami as I hide in a closet. Mrs. Ramblin returns with Ana in tow, sitting beside Hodge, who’s talking with an identical girl on the other side of him. “What’s your name?” he asks her. “Brís? Nice to meet you. I’m Hodge.” After an eerie calm, the closet doors retract like a breastbone in open heart surgery. Mrs. Ramblin bends into a crouching stupor, frothing me as she sputters and stutter-steps, hopping-mad, demonstrating some sort of moonwalk that bubbles with speechless frustration. “Someone pointed the finger,” I say, glaring suspiciously around. With the knuckles I rap a tune on the hood of Bami’s car. “What was that all about?” I ask myself, reclining against the windshield, writing in my journal.J2 When I look up Hodge is standing beside me. “What did I say about talking like a computer?” I ask. “It’s name, not name.” “I’m peopleware,” he says. “My kernel is supercomputational.” Bami unlocks the car. “That was historical. The highest kind of classic.” “I’m not entirely sure what happened,” I say. “No school tomorrow is what happened.” “What? Why?”

“Because nobody will be there,” he says. “You’re throwing a party?” I ask. “A canceller. Tonight. My place.” “At OrphanHouse?” I ask. “The remodeling’s complete?” “OrphanHouse fledged,” he says, revelating with his hands. “I call it: The Roost.”

. . .

Regarding me from a wingback chair, Bami crosses his legs. “I’ll make it easy— you don’t have a choice.” I sit on the desk. “Why can’t I forgo the bonfire and meet you afterwards, at the party?” “Don’t be fungible,” he says, nonchalant. “I have a surprise for you.” He tosses me a heavy, sloshing parcel—a glass bottle by the feel of it—packaged in a wrinkly-soft, brown paper bag. “I’ll come if it’s whisky,” I say, unsheathing the handle. I smile and untwist its cap. “Okay, fine, but your real surprise is the new girl.” “You mind dildo!” he says. “Don’t ruin it for me.” He holds up a finger, glazing over. “Bungle edit—cut that and paste it to the blooper reel. Take two: Ruin it, but don’t ruin it for me. Now rewind, be surprised and make me believe.” I laugh. “Okay, but what if a huge mind dildo actually fucked you in the head?” “Do it,” he says. “Bugger my brains.”

“That’s an interesting image,” I say. “How should I go about doing that? And if I’m a mind dildo, then what are you? The mental douche?” Bami subtitles the air: “Mind Dildo and the Mental Douche.” “Exactly, like superheroes!” I say. “The Mental Douche washes out the cobwebs, you know, gets in there, pokes around, all smooth-tongued and stealthy, at which point Mind Dildo penetrates their defenses with the silent pummel of jackhammer, mindfucking their brains out.” “Awesome,” says Bami. “It is happening. I’ll speak with my tailor about costumes.” “Fuck awesome,” I say, swigging. “I’m tired of it. Along with small talk. I’m not sure whether I have nothing to say or simply don’t know how to say it, but what is small talk? I mean, how many strangers will skip the chitchat and engage in a random, in-depth conversation on a random subject at the random moment of your meeting? Whenever I instigate such extemporaneous dialogues people look at me like blank checks, and I have the inexplicable urge to write void across their foreheads. In permanent marker. And why is it that when I’m small-talking I feel like I’m lying? I’ll be telling the truth, but it’s as if getting to know someone is in itself a lie, in that by portraying ourselves the way we want to be perceived, we create each other for one another, as well as for ourselves. The act of socializing becomes a reflection of whims in which we lose ourselves between carnival mirrors.” “Mind Dildo—put a condom on it,” says Bami, checking his watch. “By the way, don’t bet on being expelled. The pooch, I made Mr. Principle wag his tail for his dog toy.” “Again?” I ask. “I know you think it’s funny, but if you’re going to bribe anyone, get Mrs. Ramblin off my back. One minute I’m minding my own business and the next I’m the center of attention. I still can’t put it together. It’s as if going out of my way not to be noticed amplifies my noticeability, and I’m not in love with it like you are. I mean yes, I’m outgoing in person, but no, I don’t like to go out with people. “It’s driving me crazy; I can’t do another year of school. If you would just allow them to expel me, I’d be out there lost to foreign locations, waking up in strange and unlikely places. Learning indiscriminately at random. Reeducating myself.

You should come with me.” “Fat chance,” he says, scoffing. “I’m going to Harvard. You should come with me.” “I’m not doing college.” “Squiggles!” he says, dismissing me. “I worry about you.” “Why?” “Come on, jump my train of thought.” “You’re worried I won’t ruin your surprise?” I ask. Bami laughs. “It’s like I like to say: The day you give a damn, you’ll be competition. Finally, finally, you give a damn. Hallelujah! Christopher gives a damn!” “No,” I say. “What’s giving a damn? I doubt I give one. Can I take a damn?” Blindly I pace. “No, not happening. No more games, not with her.” “Get gamesome,” he says. “Or I will de-map your gamisphere.” “I’m not going,” I say, wheeling about, pulling from the whisky. Bami leers. “Should I christen your surprise before you give in, or after?” “Evil,” I say, cringing with the swill of alcohol. “You are prime evil.” “You love me,” he says. “You are why I’m fucked in the head,” I say, rattling the car keys. Hodge wanders into the living room, reading his vade mecum. “Open,” I say, holding the handle sideways. “Open,” I say, and he opens, raising the book with his line of sight.

I speed down Abercorn, inhaling Savannah and its canopied streets, accelerating into the flywheel of city and people; jaywalkers hop curbside where our velocity makes whiz of crossroads, tunneling through colonnades of oak tree and moss. “Listen up,” says Bami, enger-side. “No.” “Today you grabbed your manhood by the balls,” he says. “Stop talking.” “Tonight you contract your first sexually transmitted disease: love.” “Is that what love is?” I ask. “An STD?” “Trust me, it’s epidemic,” he says. “Love is a venereal disease.” I park and we walk onto the ocean, into the black; Bami urinates off the pier and I kick the legs over a handrail, facing the bonfire, visible from the distance; it broadcasts the firelighted aura of an apocalyptic dawn. Bami shakes off the yellow and we walk down the beach, to Back River, calling after Hodge because he loiters in an empty parking space, reading by streetlight. Guided by another light to read by, he powerwalks ahead and stretches out lengthwise—a limestone sphinx, with glasses. People ask themselves: Is this kid reading at our bonfire? An older girl says: “Hey,” and Hodge says: “Hello!” followed by: “No thank you,” when she offers him a beer. The girl, college age, asks him if he wants to put down the book and the real world, but Hodge is unresponsive. “Do you know that girl?” I ask. Bami pulls on his lip. “Ten minutes and I’ll know her biblically.” “Why do random people frequent your social functions?” “Because,” he says, already lost in her. Their eyes fuck and blaze, intangibly violent, as if they must rip each other apart

to get at it; only to find, in the end, quick fix by quick fix, that whatever it is that inflames them, eludes them, like some quenched but perennial fire. I feign disinterest, pretending at deep thoughts as I eavesdrop by incidental proximity; but I couldn’t be more intrigued so I observe overtly, obviously, obtrusively, shuffling glances between them. Blurting out like a social blooper, I gunshot guffaw, looking about as my outburst fizzles into the buttress of a smirk. “Don’t do it,” I say, still grinning, that sort of pandering after-smile that upholds an untimely laughter. “You’ll deplete your sex drive.” “You can suck it,” says Bami, beckoning the girl. Within seconds, he convinces her to take him for a walk; in the minutes that follow, the circle shares a series of uncomfortable giggles—commentaries on the exaggeration of sex, as their raillery sounds from the dunes. Hannah steals in and I take her description: With hands between her legs, kicked out straight, her toes wiggle in the heat. She interviews the bonfire, whispering to herself as she looks into the windows that form like cutouts where the logs stack together, stewing her thoughts in the coal bed. Little fires burn deep inside her pupils. She listens to the crackle and spit of dry-flaming wood, or to the faroff drone of nearby conversations, slouched, on guard, her shoulders put up like a turtle shell. She peeks at me, and pulls her legs in, pressing her soles together; ankles bent, knees flaring out to either side, bobbing in the air. Their bounce becomes her flutter, rising and falling in rapid-flighty movements so that her legs beat like wings. “Why was that necessary?” I ask, as Bami res us. “For fuck’s sake,” he says. “Or was that too literal?” I’m vaguely aware of a newcomer filling the empty space beside me. Hodge’s laughter sounds out like a cannonade, and he speaks boisterously; I glance over, wondering who has him chatted up. Angsted by the presence of Brís, I resort to an instance of interpersonal subterfuge, sitting up and peeking at the girl to the left, employing the stealth of peripheral vision. Ana. Thinking of what to say, I take stock of our surroundings. Andy the guitar guy plays the typical song-spread of guy-with-the-guitar, and the gathering, newly populated, listens, arranged in radial, odd-spread rows. Unsatisfied with the

topical inventory, I drink, sucking air through teeth so that spittle flecks about like a drizzle on the tongue. Gripping the whisky by the bottleneck, I hang it out for Ana. She slips a forefinger into the handle, lifting up as I let go, bobbing like a water buoy. Smiling curiously, she cocks back and guzzles, as if quaffing water, her throat long and exposed, moving in the wavelike ripples of relax and contract. “Let me introduce you,” says Bami, leaning over me, swiping the handle. “Thanks, but we’ve met,” she says. Puzzled, he says: “You’re confused. This is—” “In the office,” I say. “You’re Christopher.” “You’re Ana with one n.” We stare each other into limbo, and from across the fire Bami now lounges amongst a posse of girls. “Boo the goose,” he calls. “Canoodle!” “Why is he saying that?” Ana asks. The command of her voice startles me with the idea, resignation, light-bulb moment of Fuck; also known as: This girl changes everything. Her lips move. She sits like a mermaid on a rock. “What’s that?” I ask, but she assumes my question is reflexive.² “No,” I say, glancing up. “I really didn’t hear you. Could you ask a new question?” “Are you sure?” she asks, skeptical, playful. “Yes, I’m sure.” “Promise you’ll answer?” she asks, suspiciously amused. “I do want you talking to me.” “Promise.”

“Is James your real name?” she asks. “Juan,” I say. “It’s actually Juan.” “Don Juan?” she asks. “Juan Bond,” I say. “But yes, my foes call me Don Juan Bond—new and improved.” “Don Juan, I shall inform you that I have heard of your exploits and I do not approve.” “Well, actually—” “What does new and improved mean?” she asks. “If I told you then you wouldn’t have an incentive to get to know me.” “I’m already interested,” she says, glancing aside, feigning disinterest. “You can just tell me.” She glances back, but I shake no and she coils leftward. “What’s a little interest?” I ask, shifting forward, winding into the spiral of her staircase. “See,” says Ana, twisting into me, terribly close. “Was that so difficult?” “What?” I whisper, thinking she means that we are strategically in position to kiss. “The question,” she says. “Question?” I ask, utterly confused. “I asked you the same question three times,” she says; and then quips: “Third time’s the charm,” lessening the effect of her intimidating nature. “Three times?” I ask, furrowing the brow. “What did I miss?” “Me,” she says, playing at a mean pout. I look her over, taking her in. “I’m not intimidated.”

“No?” she asks, easy and bold, smartly laughing. “I wasn’t aware I was intimidating.” “You are,” I say. “It’s fascinating. But what I meant by that is that I’ve been recurrently unresponsive because I don’t know what to say. I’m not good with small talk.” “Of course you are. Try me.” “Okay, why did you move to Savannah?” “My mom teaches at the Savannah College of Art and Design. She was a professor at SCAD ATL, but she always wanted to transfer here, so when the opportunity arose we took it.” “Are your parents together, and if so, what does your father do?” Ana laughs. “Yes, they are together. My dad is a psych professor at Emory.” “Why didn’t you remain with him in Atlanta?” “He’s in England on sabbatical.” I stare off in the direction of the music, wondering how to make this less like an interview. “I kind of hate that guy for bringing an acoustic guitar,” says Ana. “Would an electric guitar do it for you?” “Hell yeah!” she says, amongst other things. I nod, smiling, not hearing her words, and fall back into the sand, feeling the strain on the knees as the legs remain crossed. They flit up and down, moving to the impulse of nerves, or due to an unbearable weightlessness. “The timeframe for response is flying out of the window of opportunity,” says Hodge, leaning in; and although I remain silent, some part of me speaks to her. The fire dances to a lulling tune, the woodpile dwindled to a scattering of twigs. Andy taps at the pick guard and kids talk themselves into pairs by the jetties, on

the dunes, hopping in the ebb and flow of beachcombers. Bami directs a group of guys to carry the plywood walls back to the Warlocks’ beach house. Halfinterestedly, I follow the permutations of strangers rearranging their whereabouts. “I have tickets to Grizzly Bear,” says Hannah. “You still like them, right?” “Yea,” I say, vaguely with her. “But it depends on the mind state.” “I agree. Mind states are super important. Was your summer good?” “I wouldn’t classify it as good, but definitely interesting,” I say. “Categorically so.” “I loved the Neil Young and Johnny Cash mix,” she says. “Thanks, I listened all summer.” “Cool,” I say. “You should also sample the National.” “Really?!” she asks, forgetting herself; and upon ing, speaks excitedly in an under-the-breath whisper. “I love the National!” I observe the backwashing silence, wondering why she finds it awkward. “What’s your favorite song?” she asks; then quickly: “By the National.” “‘Green Gloves,’” I say. “Ooh! That’s my third!” “What’s your second?” Her eyes dart up and about before glancing down. “Brainy,” she says, as if itting a fatal error, giving away too much. “I never said so, but you’re vocabulary is very impressive.” “Our generation commands the weakest vocabulary in modern history,” says Hodge, butting in. “The majority of young persons are neither precise nor concise in their communications.” He turns back to Brís, and Hannah says: “Yes, I think that’s why I like you. Your

vocabulary, that is. You talk nice. You’re enjoyable to listen to.” I wince; uncomfortable inside the skull. “There are other reasons! Silly! You know that! The real reason is you make feel . . . certain. I feel . . . shoot, I don’t know. I don’t know why I said it. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.” Annexed by Bami, Ana spies on us. Her glance is sweeping yet ticlike, the manner in which a sprinkler waters a lawn, shooting back and forth while its watercourse steadily advances. Picking up our frequency, Bami winks. The game is on, he intimates. Puppeteers feen for the feel of pulling strings. “Buy beer,” he says, indicating that he is riding with the girls. “You have a surplus of alcohol,” I say. “Besides, I lost my fake.” “No you didn’t,” he says, procuring his wallet. “Lucky you, I made you a spare.” “Why? I thought we quit that business.” “It’s too much fun,” he says, turning to Hannah. “Someone should ride with Christopher.” “I’ll ride with you,” says Hannah. “Actually—” I say, tooth-wincing to the effect of: Yea, I don’t know about that. As Bami argues, I sneak-peek at Ana, yell: “No!” and grab Hodge by the collar, fledgy, taking off in the abrupt grace of social escapism.³ The best of me comes out when I’m alone, I think, toothbrushing in the Garden, the mirror fogging as the showerhead steams. I clean off and step into a pair of jeans, tossing about a mess of old shirts. Hodge reads in the living room, and I sit with him. “How do you drink and read?” I ask, as we finish off the handle.

He stares into his book, poker-faced. “How do you drink and drive?” Tongue-tied by a loophole in logic, I answer him with several words at once, all saying different things, but their sounds jumble up into a stutter of vowels—such that, perplexed by a tackle of morals, previously unconsidered, I ask myself: How do I drink and drive? Bami Easton’s home is an updated patch of his parents’ estate; manselike, a homestead refurbished to the spread of teenage social gatherings: secluded by woods; spacious; creatively accommodating. From outside, the house throbs with the muffled bass of loud music. Patio dwellers escape the party, smoking because the noise does violence to their nerves, inhaling cigarettes like breaths of fresh air. “Look upon my brouhaha,” says Bami, waving his hand like a trident over a stormy ocean. Everywhere is mobile and drunken, upheavingly digestible, and I laugh in the mirth of no expectations, looking on as Hodge takes off. He disappears into the movable clot of partygoers, inebriated and roving and larger than himself. The newly renovated Roost is a gutted bungalow, the second and third stories leveled so that it opens up like a supersized studio apartment. The walls between rooms are demoed, but their designated areas are distinctly traceable; the outer walls run with whiteboards and markers, and the wallpapers change with the moods of the gathering. In the rafters nestle four lofts, one in each corner, as well as a central loft designed for private things; cuboidal, a black box hanged like a lantern from the ceiling. Studded with thick glass portholes, its interior is upholstered with black watercushion, and suspended from chain links, a placard announces the centrality’s byname: The Womb, a moniker that lends a feel of detachment, nearly untouchable, yet warm and connected in an obscure sense of the remote.⁴ The floor space underneath the Womb is squared off by four long couches coned at their armrests. A short-legged Japanese round table centers the squared-off couch area, and a retractable ladder extends down from overhead, onto the tabletop, descending from a submarine access hatch. Around the chabudai, intimately situated, sits Bami entertaining several girls. They regard him over empty vodkas and a litter of shot glasses, listening to him lecture in a French accent; he speaks with cavalier nonchalance, translating poignant

statements into French; the girls swoon and ask him what he says, staring at him expectantly, all dream-gone. I buttress the of a couch and swing the legs over, ing Bami and the girls. On the opposite couch, Johnny Warlock, an eccentric young Savannahian who methodizes the life of court jester, tosses a bauble in the air, catching it where it falls at his nose. Aimlessly, I browse the pageantry of talking heads. Ana chats with a clique of girls at the bar. Deciding on a drink, I stand, but Bami, in his purely accurate yet wholly inauthentic accent, beckons me to him at the chabudai. “My Christophe,” he says, throwing up a hand; we kiss cheeks. “What is up, Bo Jean,” I say slowly, as if Bami’s alter ego doesn’t know English. “It is pronounced Zhahn,” says a girl with an attitude. “Not Jean. You’re so American.” “Listen,” declares Bo, holding up a finger, commanding our attention with the shock of his voice. “You love Ana, no? A pity. That cleaves my heart into serrated halves.” “Yea, it bisects mine as well,” I say. “No,” he croons. “I love Ana, too. She is Venus and I am Mars; but how mightily I love you! Christophe, my raw Adonis, I see you; l’amour is rude. We make war for Ana, no? I propose this brotherly alternative. We spar to crown the victor.” “Dammit,” I say, looking about. “Christophe,” says Bo, “we feel too much who kill for love. We love too much who die for it.” The girls swoon and Bo basks in their sympathy—the sadness of a man heated by his ions, torn between heartbreaks. “Okay, I never said anything about love,” I say. “I prefer . . . emotionally overexcited. Besides, was it you who said that love is a disease? If so, then what’s the cure?”

“A cure? To love?” Bo asks, highly French. “No, that is quite impossible. If love is, as you say, diseased, then what is antivenin but love itself? If you must cure love, love, love again. Love is incurably yours. Love is energy. It creates you. It destroys you. “Heads up, Christophe, flip your coin: look, hate is tails. What is hate, you ask? Hate is energy conversion. Hate is a posture of love. So, maybe to understand hate we anatomize love. By what vector will love infect you? It is unpretty, but I tell you: love bites. When a love-wound putrefies, it contaminates your blood— bacteria metamorphosing in an acidic body. Hate is poisoned love. It diseases your heart, but no less, as you say, than love diseases your mind. You see, if love sickens you, then hate will counterbalance your infirmity.” “Lady friends,” he says, looking amongst them. “He who hates to hate, loves hatefully, and he who loves to love, hates lovingly; for, as he who loves to hate, loves, so he who hates to love, loves hate. What love creates, hate destroys. What love builds, hate conquers. What love seasons, hate recycles. What love gives, hate takes. What love frees, hate enslaves. What love damages, hate repairs. What love divides, hate multiplies. And what love destroys, hate recreates. That is the balance of nature. Hate is ripener or it is renewer. When it is one, love is the other, but when hate is the other, love is won.” He stands up and takes me by the arm. “Attendez-moi, mon pussycats,” he tells the girls, blowing them kisses as we relocate to a nearby sofa. “Women adore baloney, no?” he asks. “But you and I, we are men; we have businesses to discuss. If I declare Ana mine because I love her first, is there sport? No. I prefer to play with what I love, pas vous?” “Hello Bo Jean, is Bami there?” I ask, reluctant to play. “Bami est la manoir, mais je suis à la maison,” he says, with spittle. “Bami is the house, but I am home.” He smiles. “Christophe, come, it is many years since the Dark Ages. To claim the damsel without her consent s not for her tastes, and I am not false to it that it s not for ours. Modernity is time for sport. Men want game, not livestock. Now actually, if you please, my Apollonian prima donna, to our purpose. We wager like men. How score you our bet?” “Fuck this, she’s yours,” I say. “Good luck.”

“Fool,” he says. “Chance n’est pas tombe au hazard.” “Goddammit,” I say, spinning round. “Fine then, my —if you win the girl, you win the bet.” “Good, the first to score scores the bet,” he says. “What suffers the loser?” “Defeat, shame, resolve to win the next gamble,” I say. “Whatever it is, experience it in private, because this bet ends with the outcome.” “No, no, that is insufficient,” he says. “Maybe it escapes you, but I imply humiliation. Is there joy in your outcome? No. Triumph? No. So Christophe, listen, for I mean to edify you. If you lose, we, how to say, headfuck girls. We play many games with Ana. And what if I lose?” “I don’t get it,” I say. “Why do you always do this?” “Faire un fou de moi,” he says. “Make a fool of me because I will make a fool of you.” “What if I don’t?” I ask. “What if I go to Ana right now and tell her how I feel— no bet, no nothing; what would you do? But fuck it, you’d find a way to make it amusing. When you lose, you, as Bo Jean, will be honest from the first impression. When you meet a girl you like, you tell her that you like her: no pretense, no bullshit, no lies.” “Your —if I lose, I lose me?” he asks, flicking his wrist. “Who is Bo Jean without pretense, bullshit and lies? Bo Jean is not Bo Jean.” Bo stands up, thinking. His picture is lovely and evil—a mask so devilishly handsome. He smiles in the curious way he has of exposing his teeth, plopping down, the cushion queefing a whiff of displaced air. He slides his arms along the sofa’s ridge, fingers contracting like inchworms, and spreads his legs casually shoulder-width apart, bouncing the balls of his feet lightly on the edge of the coffee table. He twists open a beer and drinks with a straw, staring as he chugs at it, his cheeks like sucking on a pacifier. “Okay,” I say, matter-of-factly, as he drops the empty bottle to a bouncing-glass thud. “If neither of us wins, we both lose the bet. I fuck with girls’ heads, and you stop—”

Ana marches by with a swarm of girls in tow; all talking, laughing, and stealing eyes from boys. Resignedly, I plop down; my gaze migrates with her across the room. I glance off when I catch myself—and the sweep of her hair when I look back. With ease, she redirects her visual employment onto those who apply for her attention, causally socializing, surrounded by girls who compete less for her proximity than for her approval. Bo snorts and swaggers to the bar. He saddles next to Ana and says something, chatting briefly as he loads a painter’s palette with six drinks. I meet him en route to the chabudai, snagging a vodka and a gin and tonic, toasting him, drinks overhead. I swill the gin, drowning my critters as I worm through the crowd, spilling a splash of vodka to the shock of an elbow. Think, I tell myself: What will you say? I don’t know, I reply: She renders me illogical. Drawing near, I reveal the design of my approach through the full-on beacon of my stare, fixated, as if examining her photograph. Locks of hair sail about her scapulae when she laughs, high and sure and deeply with abandon, carrying on with a tall blonde. The blonde gasps and points, and Ana looks behind her, sidewise, in the manner of a conspirator checking for snoops, before turning around and looking along the vanishing line of the blonde’s finger. “Hi,” she says, as our visions merge. “Hi,” I repeat, in a sort of gasping laugh, handing her the vodka. Nursing the rim, held at a tilt, she nibbles on the glass, eyeing me curiously, implying the small expectations she has for our engagement; expectations that, to me, seem great: that I should open-mouth talk to her—because it’s that easy. It is, I tell myself. “Sorry?” she asks. “Huh?” I ask, confused. While I flounder, she window-shops my marbles. “Mmm,” she says, throwing back the vodka, smacking her lips and punching me with the rocks glass. I swivel forward to absorb the blow, instinctively grabbing

her by the wrist, pausing together, reflecting on the mutual realization that now is the first time we touch. “Aw, poor baby,” she says, mock-consolingly. “Did I bruise a rib?” I mum laughter, with eyes dancing, then nodding—not a definite yes, noticeably up and down, but slight and subtle, taking it in, unsure what to make of her.⁵ “Stupid boy,” she says in a play-wicked tone. “I meant to break it.” Ripping away, she squeaks and runs, looking back as she flees, intimating that I should chase. I appeal to her acquaintances for answers. They shrug as if they know her. “Hi,” says the blonde, mockingly affectionate, leading me off. “I’m Laney.” “Who?” I ask. “Laney,” she says, sounding it out like I’m slow. “I’m new.” “Right,” I say, blunt with escape. “Nice to meet you.” “She likes you,” says Laney. “Okay.” “You have no clue what you’re in for.” “I think I know what you mean,” I say, staring after Ana. “You two would make superhero babies,” she says. I regard her with a subtly amused, disbelieving headshake—curiosity, like what-the-fuck. Observing her as I backpedal into the crowd, I issue a salutary nod, and spin on the heels, finding Ana at the bar pouring vodka into a tall glass. As I grow close, she eeks in excitement and takes off, exaggerating the cuteness of her feminine form. She flaps her arms as if literally in flight, high-stepping through snake nests. I follow at a laughing pace, slithering into gaps between pockets of people, while she tracks me with strategic, over-the-shoulder glances, feigning to lose me in the mass knowing that I see through the matter. I laugh twice as hard because

hers are dating protocols made flesh, this game of cat and mouse, making a reality of how she’s interested by making a show of how she’s not. Because she flees from me I feel akin to a jaguar stalking its prey, laughing the harder at how our venery is all the same to Bo—my laughter potentiated by the realization that I am laughing hysterically, alone and in public. I catch her, but again she skedaddles, leaping away provocatively, yet as innocent as a child approaching the object of her distraction. This time I give chase, less casually and with verve, as if racing to the playground. And the house moveably breathes. Here is the potvaliance of boys talking to girls, where swashbuckling braggarts, all drunken, raise cocktails to their uninhibited egos, parrying Ana’s elbows with slashing arms, brandishing their red plastic cups to the flourish of rapiers. Frolicking two steps ahead of me, frightfully euphoric, she slips through the galactic behinds of two converging groups, but as she melts into the closure I seize her by the wrist and pull so that she spins into me, leaving a wake of human figurines waving obscenely plastic gestures. Slowly she looks up. Her puckering mischief contrasts with the frightened playfulness of her puppy-dog eyes. I thrive with goose bumps and shiver all over—bursting, joyous, wildly outside myself. “Did you forget about me?” she asks, mincing her lips. “Yes!” I belt out, in the way a toddler screams No! “Ah!” she cries sharply, as if whipped, pushing off and rushing hotfooted into the melee. Speech bubbles flash like light bulbs on and off—things to say; eyelids closed and stroboscopic, third eye blinking in the dark. As I Bo, easily reclined, plucking wings from flies, he excuses himself from the circle and s me, just as a SCAD girl skillfully cuts us off. “Hey,” she says, “you’re the Rooster.” “Wrong,” says Bami. “Not the Rooster, not a rooster—Rooster, a.k.a the Cock.” “The Cock,” she says, summing him up. “Don’t call me the Cock until you experience the Cock.”

She speaks but Bami cuts her off, and says: “Shut up or I’ll eat your brains.” Her mouth gags open. Closes. She weirdly smiles. “Rooster,” she says, but Bami, unresponsive to transparency, sidesteps her.⁷ Moving with us, she says: “You’re chatting up a group of prudes, Rooster. I’m a hotter, smarter girl who will do dirty, dirty things to you.” “Perfect,” says Bami, facing her. “Lie to yourself, because I won’t. You are ugly. Every girl in my group of prudes is hotter than you.” Before she recovers from his blunt, brutal dishonesty, he plucks the cell from her hand and plugs his number. “When we have sex,” he says, “I will hatefuck you stupid.” He tosses her phone aside; as we walk away, piqued, she asks: “Really?” “Is that the new game?” I ask. “Tell a supermodel she’s ugly? That girl is textbook gorgeous. Bewitching. Highly aesthetic. The most technically attractive female I’ve ever seen.” “What are you, an aesthete?” he asks. “She’s ugly because I hate her.” “Is that why every girl you meet wants to be hatefucked?” “Everybody wants to be hatefucked,” he says. And Bo, reoccupying Bami’s person, says: “You desire the Ana. If you please, tell me why.” “Because she’s fascinating.” “Ah, from the chicken’s fanny,” he says, clasping me on the shoulder. “Christophe, you are a freshly laid egg. Hatch, mon petit chicklet, I teach you to peck like a prince!” “Oh, Bo Jean,” I coo. “You’re so Machiavellian.” “You have spoken to the Ana, no?” he asks. “Confer with me, what is it you say?”

“Nothing until she’s gone, and then I have a hundred things to say.” “But yes, you braniacs are fools. In the French we call tardy wit: L’esprit de l’escalier.” Bo stops me amidst a gathering of highly normal persons. “Pause.” And Bami cries: “ELM!” so we cackle, headbang and howl, deeply madly, doubling over in an episodic Evil Laugh Minute. As our crescendo strains the vocal chords, our laughter gutters into coughlike, hacking theatrics. “Play,” says Bo, adjusting his collar. “Now, explain your strategy. You strategize, no?” “My strategy is that she wants me and not you. That’s the basic truth and we both know it. If she wanted you, and you wanted her, I wouldn’t be here.”⁸ I wait for Bo’s response, but having walked and talked blindly, look to where he hones in on Ana, speaking to her as Bami so as not to confuse her. As he makes her a drink, I pour two vodkas. She takes the vodka, denies Bo’s concoction, and says: “Drink it, bitch!” His surprise settles with an optic twitch, and she holds up her empty glass, twirling the dregs in the way drinkers seeing double double-take their drinks. When she sets it on the countertop, the thud has fullness to it. “Yea?” I ask, daringly, glancing at her vodka glass. “Mm-hmm,” she says sweetly, taking mine, placing it beside hers. “Make me another.” “Close your eyes,” I say. “You’re expecting vodka, but I’m making the only acceptable mixed drink. You have to guess what it is.” “But what if I guess wrong?” “I’ll never talk to you again.” “Not fair.”

“Okay, then you’ll have to make it up to me.” “Deal,” she says. “Keep them closed,” I say, grabbing for tonic water. “Obvi—mmm.” “What’s that?” I ask, turning to see the back of Bo’s head, kissing Ana. “Foul play!” “Call me Gambit,” cries Bami. “My first hand was explosive!” “Ahh!” screams Ana, punching him in the throat. “Ass! Ass, ass, ass, ASS!” Massaging his Adam’s apple, Bami chokes on his laughter; when he walks away, it is Bo who preoccupies him. Self-satisfied, he whispers: “First to score scores the bet.” “Poop, I thought it was you,” says Ana. “Yea,” I say, watching how she inverts her head downwards while her eyes— big, wide, sad, moistened—look up. Then I’m laughing, her voice ringing in the ears: Ass! “Why is that funny?” she asks. “If Bami’s all mouth, then you gave him lip.” “And fist,” she says, holding it up like the Irish, or else swearing herself to a villainous plot of revenge—the back of her mitt facing forward. “You are terrifying,” I say, amusedly. She takes me by the hands and bounces on the balls of her feet, moving into me, glistened with affection; running, she takes me with her, but I lag behind and sprint forward to cut her off—a frenzy occupies our gaze; chaotic, like monarchs and other flocking creatures. Guided by a subversive insight, and according to the piratical spontaneity of impulse, I pick her up into the whorl of a bear hug; her feet leave the ground and as we spin, I accept the present of a past consideration, steering us onto a nearby air mattress, positioned there in the foresight of such an occasion.

We slow down, adjusting to our bodies as they reposition themselves. She lies on top of me, and I internalize the feel-good of her weight. “Eskimo kiss,” she whispers, grazing our noses. I move the hands up her waist, lightly squeezing, working her like a sculptor. She is tight and streamlined, and the hands generate a reel of flesh like longly rolling waves. Her fine muscles ripple, reworked like clay, pressing the thumbs into her abdomen; fingertips trace the runs between her ribs, counting each groove in ascending order. I handle her softly like brushstrokes on skin, and then firmly, watching, memorizing the contour of her guise. She is real, I think; not the sfumato of dreams, but the sketch of material. Her features are graphed by matter. She stares from above, unconscious with wonder, licking her lips openly as she interacts with the dreamlike distance of our imaginary kiss. Seeing us in this new light, she inhabits the void, demonstrating how a thought, idea, or memory is blindly inspected from the inside out. Entranced, I map her features, but the eyes startle her, and she contracts her wondrous vacancy into a discerning, suspicious glare. Why doesn’t he kiss me? she asks herself, and I wonder if she wonders whether I am asking the same thing. Why don’t I kiss her? When I touch her face, she jumpstarts like a midnight awakening. Looking as if never to see me again, or as if it has been a long time since she has, she stands, now composed, patting me strict and onishingly in the groin. An onlooker doubles over as she runs off. “She slapped you in the balls!” Young drunkards swarm me and I spin about, listening to what I talk about when I don’t know what to say. People catch me on autopilot and I’m this self-moving, self-regulating social machine, as if by being far away from myself, I am closer to them. I come-to debating with a girl who’s explaining why I need to take a snapshot with her. “I’m not here because I like you people,” she says, holding out her camera. “Parties are photo-ops. Will you take the picture or what?” But Ana dismisses the girl and takes me by the hand.

“Stupid boy,” she says, both cold and hot, neutralized by a sardonic grin. She consults me with a what-now. I shrug, and she contorts her lips into the taste of sweets. “Aaa,” she says, holding up a handle of vodka. “Aaa,” we hum, tongues out to doctors, filling up like shots at an open bar. “Play with me.” She runs, and with eyes like hide and seek, we play tag; I spy; here and there; on-again-off-again. Is it reality or is it peek-a-boo?¹ Ana tosses her hair—interrupted by a tall, athletic narcissist who flashrapes her with a camera. He underhands it to a friend and tells him to take their picture, wrapping an arm around her waist, pleased with himself; but Ana, untamed, steals his hand from her hip and leans her forearm on his shoulder, spitting poison and mockery at the lens as she assumes the vixenlike caricature of seduction. Grilling, she bites at the nail of her left pointer, scrunching her nose with erotic suggestion. When the flashbulb lights up their nativity, she shoves the boy off and his drink stains his shirt. Narcissus swears, hand-motioning like dogfights, and other such gestures of aerial warfare; he shit-talks and pokes at her, but Ana stares him down, fiery and tall, as if a supernatural energy is partial to her, and lends its power to her purpose. Unably moved, I advance briskly forward and light into Narcissus, and he falls to the squeegee of flesh over polyurethane. He stands up tall but I am taller, and he is huge but I am made bigger by some incorporate quality. I feel like an entity of magnified proportions as electricity skullsates down the spine and into the calves, surprising myself, that although I’ve imagined such things, I’m otherwise unmoved by physicality. Narcissus looks to his friends, who gather here, summoned by a sense of human things. They’re a troop of dickfondling chimpanzees—homoerotic and bloodlusted—desperate to tear limbs from monkeys. Ana throws back her head and laughs amusedly with a palm to her sternum, fingers poised and long, their nails touching at the cleft in her neck. Her voice rings out with the critical mass of belly laughter, and she is caught up in fullbody riot. Commenting during exhalations, she gasps, deeming the chimpanzees hilarious—her voice neither kind nor careless but somehow teasing; sweet, yet scoffing; insensitive to the feelings of uncared-for individuals.¹¹

“You’re cute,” she says, aw-ing them, still chuckling. “But touch me again and I will cut you,” she says, incisive. Slowly, the chimps disperse. Looking to me, she grins and runs, and her long dark hair follows her like sparkling lines of gunpowder, each strand of brunette washed in lamplight—their sheens like mudded-gold. In ing, I meet Hannah, who curtsies in some sort of mating ritual, granting me social consent. She is shitfaced inebriated, a silliness to her drunken swagger. She laughs to herself, or at me, at everything, swirling about a handle of whisky as she murmurs indistinct clips and phrases. In an effort to reduce the confusing nature of our dialogue, I study her kinesics. Her chest is chatty with presentation, loquacious, and her shoulders stoop, revealing her postured cleavage, breasts jiggling with social movement. She flicks the hair from her mouth as she laughs; but glancing upwards, straightens herself, as if suddenly aware. The silliness goes and she undulates with the half-breathlessness of nerves—how her words catch in whispers. Observing her, I feel like a dog to its owner; how the owner stands some feet away, crouching forward with her knees bent. I watch the ebb and flow of her tits as she rocks back and forth, as if taking it from behind—calling to me, saying: “Come here, boy, come here.” I am the dog that sits there and cocks his head to the side, thinking the humans must be crazy. Hannah falls forward in a swooping reel of artifice, so that I catch her and she holds me. Her action is made unbearably cute by the nature of its transparency, obvious and unlearned in deceit. She looks up, wanting her lips in mine, our mouths together. “No,” I say, positioning her at arms’ length. “You don’t know what you’re doing.” “Horsefeathers,” she says, far gone but assertive, attempting to argue as she deadweights. “It’s improbable that you’ll this,” I say, tossing her over the shoulder. As I lay her down, she talks to herself, snuggling into the of the couch. Smiling, I appreciate her beauty, and want nothing to do with it.

“Hey, Bo Jean, watch her,” I say. Bami winks, and the bar leers at me, all goofytoothed, the handles these gnashing incisors, and the wines these purple grape skins tucked into toothy gums. Ana staffs the counter, cradling a bottle of vodka in her arm; dancing, madly intimate with her body. I do not believe in love, I mouth, watching her; Love like the dialect of illogic. Love like senselessness. Love like random outbursts of dancing plague. Despite myself, and in spite of all that I believe, little as that is, I know that I am falling for her—like listening to her song. “Love like barbaric,” I say out loud. Navigating the hoopla, I go to her, eyesight spinning like hula-hoops taken for a walk. I absorb things fucked up, the kids, all here and now, this time in the pursuit of happiness. We are given to the rhythms that take us, gone to our red herring scene. I light a cigarette to keep from vomiting, made dizzy, but less nauseated. Laney intercepts me, and taking me by the arm, she schmoozes, steering me to a loveseat. “No schmoozing,” I say, but her penchant for gossip is impervious to my complete lack of interest. Sitting here like lost and found, I feel like something looked upon but unseen. Hiding in the open. Searched for and undestroyed. From above, there crows a murder out the Womb. “Uh-aa-uh-aa-uh-aaa,”—like cock-a-doodle-doo. “What was that?” asks Laney. “Rooster.” “Here, we have to be friends on Facebook,” she says, handing me her phone. “I friended you so you have to accept.” “I am hardcore fucked-up wasted,” I say, deflecting. “Accept my friend request,” she says. “If it’s that urgent, do it for me.” I narrate my credentials as she accompanies me to the bar, ing by two guys pouring whisky and generic sugar powders into a gilded, heavy metal bowl. “That’s Bami’s chamberpot,” I

say, to the effect of blank stares. “He pees in it. You know, instead of walking to the bathroom at night. It belonged to the Earls of Oxford.” Laney laughs, and I ask: “Do you think one hundred years from now our descendants will browse our social networking profiles, commenting on who we were when we were young?” “One sec,” she says, “I’m texting.” “Right,” I say. “See you later.” “I’ll text you,” she says distractedly. I fish for a rocks glass behind the bar, but Ana sets one down; used, the stick of whisky and soft drink pooled at the bottom. Laney saddles next to us and makes a mixed drink in a red plastic cup, waving goodbye with her fingers. Bami squares off with her. “What do you want?” he asks. Laney smirks. “What do you have?” “Nothing I don’t need more of,” he says. “Girls, sex and money.” “Congratulations,” she says. “You have what I want.” “I take it you’re deep,” he says, scoffing. “As deep as your pockets,” she says. Ana pours vodkas and we drink, whorl, spin. Leaning into and balancing each other, we laugh, not unlike old friends reacquainted. Kissing, feeling up, I say: “Let’s go to the Womb.” “What’s the rush?” she asks, slow and far off. She stumbles backwards and attempts to run swimmingly, but I reel her in and pick her up. “No,” she commands, tapping me on the forehead with the flat of her fingers. “No,” she says, rolling her eyes, head, body.

She plays limp, so I lay her lightly down; the rocks glass upheld, with her elbow planted, she brandishes it about in slow-drunken pivots. Jutting her head back, she mocks the view behind her, lying there in small writhings and warring with herself. Laughter rumors in her chest and I feel her voice in the air; rumbles of an under-the-breath humor; unaware of herself, letting it out. Funny like fuck-it; I think, losing it; laughter like fucked-in-the-head. I kneel down alongside her, elbows to the floor and hands working at the scalp, tugging at fingerfuls of hair. I flip over and spread-eagle, the skull lolled sideways, watching Ana. It seems that this day has always been; feelings, and the reimagining of things recently past. Here, now, the present is given to memory, nostalgic for the moment—ing us along. Hodge and Brís quarrel at the bar. My brother is drunken, loud, roaming; a spread of crimson blotches his neck and arms in the patchwork of Scottish flush, naked but for his boxers. Brís commands him to put on his pants, but he takes a handle of grain alcohol and swigs piratically, dousing his clothes where they pile on the floor. Brís fights him for the lighter and commands him to sit, pulling his shirt overhead so that it scarfs his neck. “You flavor my vodka,” she says. “You my dongle,” he replies, handing her a random set of electric shears, sitting down. “I want a mohawk.” Brís runs her hands through his hair. “You’re hot,” she says, and cuts his hair. People are leaving; it’s early or late. The sky is grey, blue, metallic, and the windows show scenes from dawn; once asleep, I wake up in dreamspace.¹²

. . .

“But sunrise set me up,” I say, blinking, having woken to the sound of my own

voice. The Roost breathes with heavy sleep—everywhere laid out with the aesthetics of debauchery, almost innocent, like we have no idea what we’re doing: floors haphazard with red plastic cups, and sleepers tilting beer cans in their laps, held loosely upright by the natural curl of fingers. Mostly SCAD students, they scatter like leftovers to a feast, boozed and vegged-out, all asleep with each other; draped over loveseats, on lounge chairs, rolled up in shag carpets. They set tables, slouch on barstools, and splay like hit-and-run victims on the floor. Their jaws melt into cold, hard marble, toothily agape, puddling with saliva. Hodge spoons Brís on an air mattress, sagging with the slow deflation of excess weight, and Bami broods amidst a straggle of females, all decked in pillows around the chabudai. He declines at an awkward angle, a wine bottle planted in the open zipper of his jeans. The bottleneck leans upright between his thighs, sprouting a bouquet of lilac roses; the petals wilting, drooping, because they too have had too much to drink. Down his naked torso scrolls a note in red permanent marker, written boldly in mirror script.¹³ I’m lying on a couch, shirt off and wrapped into a bundle around the wrist; and it occurs to me that a foreign occupant is utilizing the belly, smiling down at Ana where she lies fetuslike between the legs, her shoulder wedged into the groin. Burrowing with comfort-seeking motions, she pillows the gut, empty, so that it gurgles with the guttural crescendo of a gravity tube. Lifting her cheek, I lay down the shirt as a buffering agent and listen to her breathe, hearing, at some point, a Who, so that I drift about, hypnagogic, in search of Whoville. “Hey,” I say, when she stirs. “Hi,” she says; a mouse-squeak, startled, yet sleepy. Cute in the facelessness of waking, she blinks, regaining the backbone of her composure. She smiles, not happily, but endearing and unsure, maybe nerve-wracked, the jitters worn badly on someone who is normally sure of herself. She expresses the mischief of a handsome vixen, but her eyes don’t lie; they contain the tremble and dart of a cornered fox. “Do you want a ride?” I ask, as she slinks up and lies with me. “We can get breakfast.” “I would, but I can’t leave my friends,” she says, frowning. “I drove.”

Later she says: “Fork me,” sliding her knee between the thighs as she moves close, lying face-to-face with our legs interlocked, forming tines, our torsos melded into a handle. “I guess forking is what happens when both spoons want to be the big spoon,” I say. “You know, we could play charades with the subcategory of: snuggle positions in the imitation of culinary items. Next on the menu: knifing.” “I do not like the sound of that,” she says, laughing, “Forking is the best.” “How about jackhammer?” I ask, shaking epileptically until our vocal chords vibrate. “Stop it!” she says, hitting me. Her laughter this morning is cuter, shallow and choppy; less the powerful stuff that knows things and more of chuckles rife with mischief; under the breath, high-pitched, diffusing through her pinched and smirking lips. Somehow, she’s pleased; as if we’re a dream whose world she can’t place now that we’re awake; that to speak of dreams and explain them is to forget what makes them real. “Why don’t you wear shoes?” she asks, enunciating her wonder with hard, cold logic—but curious on the inside, unaware of her penetrative exterior; it’s the tone of her voice when asking about something she doesn’t understand, and the facial expression her questions occupy. “Footwear is the one social construct I refuse to abide,” I say, smirking selfdeprecatingly. “Which is why going barefoot is the one movement I’ll stand for.” “I know it is good for your feet, but is that why?” “Wait, how do you know that?” I ask. “I read Born to Run,” she says. “I run cross-country and coach recommended it.” “Yea, the human foot is a biological marvel, yet we wear thick-soled shoes, rendering ourselves more useless than ever in of evolutionary adaptability.” “Yeah, but why? What is the reason you don’t wear shoes?”

“I don’t know. I can think of seven different reasons off the top of my head. I could lay something hippie on you, such as: I like how the earth feels beneath my feet, or I could sport athletic logic, as in: my knees don’t hurt and I don’t get shin splints when I run barefoot. Or that my feet feel stifled with shoes and socks on, and the mufulufia disturbs me. The real reason is I don’t know why. I’ve always gone barefoot, and I can’t a time when I didn’t.” “You run?” she asks. “We should go running!” “Okay,” I say, a little breathless in her excitement, a euphoric lightness in the lungs. Incredulous, she asks: “Why is everyone going to school after lunch?” “It’s Bami’s new plan,” I say. “He thinks it will be hilarious if everyone shows up late.” She asks: “What is mufulufia?” “It’s the brandlike imprint of inertly applied pressure over an absent-minded extension of time, such as this red mark on my stomach where you slept on it, or when your feet are sweat-wrinkled after a long day in footwear. Actually, that’s the one thing I like about wearing shoes; taking off my socks. It feels like a breather, or stepping out of a stuffy room into fresh air.” “You are weird,” she says, laughing. “Yea,” I say. “I don’t know.” I stare off, but coming back to her, she regards me strangely, wondering where I am. “What is it?” she asks, repositioning herself attentively. “You are biting your lip.” “Don’t stop,” she says. “It tells me you’re thinking. What are you thinking?” “That you scare the hell out of me,” I say. It blurts out like a command, but slow, ejaculatory, half a question. She looks down, up, into me. “Kiss me,” she says.

Singled-out strands of her hair laze into focus, lit up by morning light, curling about her fist where it knuckles her earlobe. The hairs shimmer with other airborne particles; but wispier, like lengthened tendrils of dust. Sucking her underlip, she looks up; I move a hand to her cheek. As I pick a tendril from her lips, she smiles, and I glaze over, curling her hairs around the forefinger. I kiss her, and as I pull away she bites the bottom lip, holding me there, contorting out a grin as I slip through her teeth. Glancing down, she walks her fingertips up the sternum. “You scare me too.”

. . .

I nod off, but lurch, fighting it as Mrs. Ramblin drones on about The Taming of the Shrew; she walks back and forth—another lecture—fluorescent lights drowsing the eyes while a warm afternoon eases bluely through windows, colored whitish with hot fuzz. I take solace in drooping the eyelids, resting them just for a second, but the face relaxes then molts and everything with it, slipping into a drug that wears me from the inside; a heavy gown—and with eyes closed I lie down inside myself, curled up with furs so snugly, thoughtless but for the feel-good of a smile that isn’t there, not on the lips but felt around the skin; a smile that sinks in as I drop off—flying, but down—jumping because I’m about to fall. The elbows kick out and I headbang-reel, landing in the seated position, sitting up in a desk. Jerk, I think, looking around. Hypnic jerk. Bami walks to the podium. “Mrs. Ramblin, it’s the confabs.” “Then it’s best you get things off your chest, dear,” she says, stepping aside and smiling at him; but someone’s pencil-tapping incites her. “Johnny! Be respectful.”

“Petruchio is a man,” begins Bami, asserting that this man uses psychological tactics such as behavior modification to mold Kate, the shrew, into the perfect woman: crazy, yet tamed; opinionated, yet obedient. In conclusion, he asks: “What did Petruchio tell Kate in Act 5, Scene 3? He said: ‘Woman, don’t placate me!’” “There’s no Act 5, Scene 3,” says an uppity girl. “Erroneous!” he says, emphatic, then calmly: “You don’t get it because you’re stupid.”¹⁴ Bami steps down and Mrs. Ramblin’s lecture resumes, along with the pencil tapping. “Johnny! Transcription! Write: I will not tap my pen on the desk one hundred times.” He taps the pencil as he scribbles with a pen. “Johnny!” “Mrs. Teach, you count by threes! I tally thirty-four.” “Thirty-four?” she asks. “I see one—” “Thirty-four taps,” Johnny says, holding up a piece of paper transcribed with bold font: I will not tap my pencil on the desk one hundred times. Mrs. Ramblin malfunctions, sputtering, shutting down like a robot; shoulders stooped, horrified with the notion of disrespect. Johnny continues to tap his pencil, and as his metronome generates an emotional response, she powers on. “Irreverent!” she cries, shrilly. “Out, out of my classroom!” “I got ninety-nine taps but a hundredth ain’t one!” says Bami, as Johnny stays his pencil. “Detention!” she says. “I would pencil you in but I’m tapped out!” says Johnny.

“Fool!” cries Mrs. Ramblin, “I will not tolerate your, your—” “Foolishness,” offers Bami. “Yes!” she says, and breathlessly, hand to temples, repeats: “Yes.” “Mrs. Ramblin, I hear you,” he says. “Most heartily I concur. These fools, what do we do with them? Give them the chance to redeem themselves, I tell you— Johnny, the stage is yours.” “Mrs. Teach,” Johnny says. “On sight, will you send a fool to the office?” “Yes,” she says, exasperated. He takes the mirror from the back wall and holds it behind his back as he skips to the front of the class. “Reflect upon my mirror—but firstly, what would Mrs. Teach do?” “What . . . would I do?” asks Mrs. Ramblin. “Send yourself to the office,” he says. “Why—” “Fool!” he cries, holding up the mirror. “On sight!” When she sees herself, he shatters the mirror; shards fall like puzzle pieces to the floor. “All aboard, to the office!” he says. “Set sail, Mrs. Teach; the water’s dry but madness runs on tap! Our ship’s marooned, fear never—I’ll learn you the ropes with this lesson on knots. Firstly, sheathe your sword! Patience susses out what but kibbles on edge.” “Immediately!” says Mrs. Ramblin. “The office!” “Give me a second and I’ll give you yours,” he says. “When your fingers untie knots your hands are tied to rigging, hold up, or undo what you are doing!” Mrs. Ramblin powerwalks at and hauls him to the office; Bami takes the podium and time takes a at me, coming-to in the bathroom.

Leaning out, I look the hallway up and down. “Hey you!” says Ana. “What are you doing?” “Actually, I’m not sure,” I say, stepping into the hall. “Wakewalk daydreaming?” “You left twenty minutes ago.” “Right,” I say. “I heard you’re a junior?” “Yeah.” “But you’re in AP English?” “The credits transferred weird,” she says. “That’s why I was in the office yesterday.” “Interesting,” I say, kicking at the ground, trying for the squeaky-clean sound of a scuff mark on tile. “Do you like it here?” “It is interesting,” she says, head bowed but looking up, casting shadows like mascara. “Do you want get out of here?” I ask. “Sure do,” she says. “Where are you taking me?” “For a walk.” “Where to?” she asks. “Let’s just go.” Ana shrugs. “If that will get us there.” ing by a box of arts and crafts under a bulletin board, she selects a red marker and writes a poem. “Hmm,” she says. “Work on me with this.” “Sure,” I say, laughing, “but first I’ll work on this with you.” “What?” she asks.

“So you have roses are red, violets are blue—” “Write your own!” “I don’t do poetry,” I say. “You are a big fat liar! I heard—” “You heard wrong,” I say, moving into the entrance hall. The front office is walled off by sheets of glass smudged with handprints and oily portraits. As Mr. Naps chats up the secretary, I track his response to my movements; with Ana several feet behind, I open the front door for her, nodding as strangers do. I follow her out and onto the sidewalk, but Mr. Naps ahems and Ana shouts: “Run!”—sprinting across the parking lot and through a row of trees. Ana stops at a rocky embankment, about-facing on her heels, windmilling as she pelvic-thrusts on tiptoes. I slow to a raptorlike prowl, dropping the arms and shoulders, feigning exhaustion, colliding into her with the upward explosion of a bear hug—laughing, euphoric, the sensation of being caught but not captured. Foot-sliding down the graveled slope, I set her down on the train tracks. She slips her hand in mine, but unhappy with the traditional technique, says, “Like this,” playing at a species of thumb-war, using hers to guide mine into the hollow between our palms. “Thumbs need shelter because they’re lonely,” she says; and our arms swing between us, fisted together—the original handheld communication device. “I like this,” she says. “Going.” She runs ahead and catwalks a rail as gracefully as a gymnast on a balance beam. She pirouettes and returns, teetering right, left as she lopes into a run and crashes into me. I catch her and facilitate our fall so that we lie on the tracks, looking into blue and empty heights. “You can recite me a poem,” she says, informative, playful. “I don’t—” “I know you do.”

“Who’s your informer?” “Little birds,” she says tittering, then glowering with a severe pout. “Don’t moue me,” I say. “I am not a heifer,” she says, rolling into me. “I did no mooing.” “Not moo,” I say. “Moue. Technically it’s a noun, meaning a wry, pouting grimace.” “Deja moo,” she says. “Deja moo?” “The illusion of having heard this bullshit before.” She throws a hand-sign like what. “It’s slang psychology. I’m going to be a psychiatrist. Now let’s drink.” “Alcohol?” “Mm-hmm. Vodka.” “In your purse?” I ask. “What is vodka doing in your purse?” “In Atlanta we drank in school out of water bottles. You’ve never done that?!” “No, but sure. Let’s drink.” Ana twists the cap off a plastic water bottle, and I smell the etherlike vapor, cringing, sweating in the hot sun of a late summer afternoon. Still woozy from last night, I don’t let on, observing her: callous in a precocious sense; intelligent, volatile, assertively caustic; but also kind, with the impression of being fiercely loyal; and she is something more than me. I can’t put a finger on it, but it’s as if she knows who she is—and that seems to me the most fascinating prospect in the world: to know who you are; in that, it’s compromising to interact with someone who knows who she is when you don’t know who I am, for it changes things, because I change, as if on a whim, and I’m not sure how to react to the things she says. It’s like being dumbfounded by a hundred ideas at once, all cancelling each other out so that I have no idea what to say because I could say anything.

Dropping her chin with the bottle, Ana issues a burning, thirst-quenching: “Ahh,” followed quickly by a pleased: “Mmm.” “So a psychiatrist,” I say, smirking. “Where do you want to go to college?” “Emory. Ahh! You should apply!” she says, handing me the vodka. “No way,” I say, drinking, but gag on an empty stomach. “Oopsies, I’m pretty sure that’s grain alcohol. Vodka’s a blanket term.” I spit-take, and Ana laughs it off. “Aw, poor baby!” she says. “I don’t know how you do it,” I say, earnestly. “How long have you been drinking?” “Since I was fourteen.” “You mean the first time you drank?” “No, getting drunk.” “Consistently?” “Yeah,” she says, like obvious. “How did you do it? The logistics, buying the alcohol, storing it and such?” “Older siblings. Me and my girlfriends drank in my room and hid the bottles in my closet. One day my mom found them! She cried for hours. We counted twenty empty handles.” After a sizeable hush, she asks: “What’s Savannah like?” “Savannah,” I say, “I don’t know. There’s a wilderness here. It’s in the locals, and the atmosphere. She’s alive. She owns you. And it’s entirely illogical. Maybe it’s just me.” “Keep talking,” she says, in a mock-dreamy voice, batting her eyelids. “I’m serious! I like listening to you. It’s your voice. I wish I could hear you think.”

“Ha!” I say. “My thought patterns are fucked. I’m a product of instant gratification, movies with half-second shot sequences, peanut butter, and the interweb.” “Tell me more about Savannah,” she says. “Okay, let’s see,” I say. “She’s coy, teasing, absurd, and she feels you in your bones with her weird-beautiful eccentricities. Everything here’s a bit unbelievable, but you have to believe it because it happens. Savannah’s a congregation of these maddening things, but she’s home, a place to come back to.” “I knew it,” Ana says. “You are in love.” “Yea, but she isn’t the jealous type.” “I am not the other woman,” she says, mincing. “Tell Savannah she best watch her ass.” “Careful,” I say, leaning close. “She’s listening. She says to rinse out your mouth.” “Oh,” she says, her face falling. “How should I do that? The vodka’s all gone.” Ana inverts the bottle and shakes it. Droplets scatter like random cloudbursts of rainfall. They wet the tracks and spot our clothes. She leans in and we are maybe breaths apart, both of us watching closely, eyes dancing in a sort of trancelike mating ritual. The gravel digs deeply, a pleasing pain, ravished by the heat of our skinship. We sweat and frottage, but when I lift her shirt she sits up and says: “What’s the rush,”—a slight slur; and she repeats herself, muttering under her breath: what’s the rush. Drunken, dizzied, I grab another water bottle from her purse and drink and hack and wretch—more vodka. I lie back, laughing, and she swings a leg over me, sitting on the lower abdomen. I flex and relax, bouncing her up and down; she laughs and says to stop because she doesn’t ride horses, and that she wants to look at me, touch me—running her hands through the hair; stilling me, she leans in, kicking her legs back as she kisses at me, absorbing every detail in between. She careens side-to-side like the

shuttle of a loom weaving yarns in slow motion, the warp to my weft; her long stray hairs brush over orifices, and I dream off, wondering after the experiences that influence who she is with me—what she wants, and whether I can give it to her, so that I can upchuck the sedatives of this ponderous reservation and her in our moment.¹⁵ “Train!” says Ana, and I jump up, stopped dead, watching detachedly as it chugs along at sixty miles per hour. Death, on track, hiding behind a veil of the imaginary. The locomotive grins with its steely bluntness, and I grin back, feeling nothing as I envision myself the splay of tendon and bone and splinter, a body drawn down the tracks in red smears of splatter-paint—but not mine, as it is Mr. Potato Head broken there and maulfleshed on the rails.¹ “No,” I say, losing balance as Ana grabs me. The train skirrs explosively by, to the roar of the Doppler effect. “Are you crazy?!” “It wasn’t real,” I say, blinking. “It’s simulation and simulacrum.” “It was real!” she yells, and I feel her soul in it. “Trains are real!” “I didn’t mean to scare you,” I say. She’s quiet for a moment. “You could have died.” “I didn’t, but if I had, maybe my death would have made such an impression on you that you make cutting-edge advances in the fields of psychology and neuroscience on the subjects of death and Thanatos, changing how people live by changing how they view dying.” “I won’t listen to you talk like that,” she says, but nevertheless nibbles her lip. And flushing, says: “That was hot,” but looks at me sharply—a toddler telling off her father, cutely serious. “But don’t ever do that again. Ever.” “Huh,” I say, exhaling. “What time is it?” “6:30.”

“Unreal,” I say, taking her hand to escort her up the bank. “It’s been four hours?” “Looks like it,” she says, entering the parking lot. “Where’s your hot ride?” “The black one.” “Can a girl get a lift?” she asks, sexy-faced, with hand to hip. “Don’t move,” I say. She sticks out her hitchhiker’s thumb and I pull up beside her, rolling down the window. “Oh my god! It’s Vin Diesel!” she squeals, hands to knees. “Who’s Vin Diesel?” I ask. “Poop, you aren’t Vin Diesel. You look nothing like him.” “What’s he look like?” “He’s big and sexy and has a hot voice. I guess you’re kind of like him. But you’re tall-big with blue eyes and when it is sunny your hair changes color in the wind. And you are a sweet baby bear.” “Vin Diesel isn’t a sweet baby bear?” I ask. “M-mm, nope.” “What about that ride?” I ask. “Umm, it depends,” she says, twirling her hair like Barbie. “Whatch-ya got in there?” “Stuff,” I say, playing at a deep lisp. “Faux-leather seats. Cup holders. A glove box.” “What’s in your glove box?” “Guns.”

“Guns?” she asks, piqued. “Lots of guns,” I say, flexing a bicep, maintaining the lisp. “Ooh,” she says, still twirling her hair, weight on one hip. “Is that a pistol in your pants?” “Type-25 DEP.” “Ew, sounds big.” “Yea, for n00bs.” “Mm-kay, you can give me a ride,” she says, nonchalant. Minutes later, she says: “You don’t have to drop me off. We can—go.” “Sure,” I say, slowing down for a yellow light. “Yellow means go faster!” she says, and I downshift to fourth, speed through the light, up the ramp and onto the interstate. The windows flood with river-rapid air, cool with nightfall, the hours shallow and rocky-smooth. “Kiss me,” she says; I do, and her hairs whip at our faces, inadvertently accelerating; but then I’m with her and the heart’s pounding and I’ve never felt such power, emotion, rage all and at once, actualized, existentially incensed— laughing between kisses. The open road longs for the full moon hanging low at the distance, but Ana’s hand blocks my peripheral vision and I break skids, parked diagonally in the middle of the road somewhere in the countryside. I jump the center console and Ana fumbles for the door, spilling onto the asphalt with her legs straddling me; I ferry her to the tall grass where I roll into the brush of her nipples across the chest, analyzing the weight of their hang—how they graze as she kisses at me. I flip her over and unbutton her jeans, but she stops me and asks: “What’s the rush?” We halt, lain together, feeling how she breathes. “Talk to me,” she says, her ear to the heart. “What’s on your mind?”

“Paramnesia,” I say, looking into the Milky Way.¹⁷ Staring longly, she asks: “Do you ever listen to a song and have no clue why you love it? When I first saw you this song “Nineteen” by Tegan and Sara popped into my head. It was like the first lines jumped out at me and I thought: This is why I love that song!” “How’s it go?” I ask. “I’ll sing for you,” she says, kneeling with her hands to her thighs, singing the first three lines. Looking to me, she bites her underlip. “It means I think I felt you always. Yesterday when you looked at me you reached into me and shook my heart and said: ‘Nice to finally meet you.’” “Yea, I vaguely that,” I say. “No, I definitely do. Your heart had a firm handshake. I believe it responded: ‘Likewise, I’ve heard so much about you.’” Laughing, Ana punches me. “I’m being serious! I hardly think I was ready for it because then you tore me up inside.” “Yea,” I say, looking off. “I thought of a song, too . . . when I saw you.” “Which? Sing me it!” “I’ll play it for you,” I say. “But not here. We have to go to Little Tybee.” “Where’s that?” “Next to Tybee Island, across Back River. It’s actually twice the size of Tybee, but it’s an uninhabited nature preserve. I used to swim it. But yea, I’ll play it for you there. It’s strange that it reminds me of you, but it’s the best kind of strange.” “Won’t you sing for me?” she asks. “No.” “I’d rather wait anyways,” she says, crossly. “Tell Don Juan he can kiss me now.”

And she says: “Mmm—God I love kissing you.” “Basta,” I say. “O me encantará.” Realizing something’s amiss, I move the car out of the road and return with a Mexican blanket. As we stare off and into the confusion of stars and earth and space, her breathing changes; light, shallow—but I am awakened by the night, and count her breaths like a sleepless shepherd, phrenic, wanting but unable to dream within a dream.

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“Bang!” says the voice, and I backhand myself in the nose, bloodied and whiplashed, blinking forcibly; the wrist durrs from a lanyard slipped around the neck. “Boner jamz,” says Bami, satisfied with his prank. “What month is it?” I ask, slipping off the lanyard. “September,” he says, getting lunch. The red drips onto the tabletop; I sniff, hock, and spit. With hands to brow, I pan the cafeteria; everyone there: people, their faces interacting like speech bubbles and live-feed blurbs, texting emoticons, streaming textual updates. They look, overlook, see through each other—just there, online, every one of them alone inside their heads, yet feeling some sort of togetherness; that this social gathering is right and they are not lonely. As I imagine it, the scene darkens and the cafeteria becomes a herd of interdependent entities. A spark, the hint of danger, and this herd stampedes. “I’m not one to point out the obvious,” says Bami, sitting down with his lunch tray, “but you have blood on your face.” He taps his spoon. “Is this the silent treatment, or didn’t you have time to respond?” “Me, I can do this all day,” he continues. “But that’s obvious, isn’t it?” And he says: “Stop moping, or I will do the most obvious things to you.” I laugh; red bubbles from the lips. “You look like a psychopath,” he says. His eyes widen. “I want some!” He extends his hands open-palmed, demanding alms. I collect a thick smear of nostril-blood and sluice it on his fingertips, like grating a shoe on the curb of a

sidewalk. He applies the blood to his cheeks and mouth area, mopping up puddles from the tabletop. Bami stands up redfaced and warpainted. His eyes, shock blue, burn like electric. “Scenario one,” he begins. “We are zombie prototypes released by Hades and the NWO. Or scenario two: We are big, gay and fan-fictive laughers peacocking to the death. I call Gywnplaine. You do Tyler Durden. You are dirty at the Durden laugh.” “We already did scenario two,” I say. “Twice.” “Suckle my smegma,” he declares. “Scenario one.” “Or we could sit here with blood on our faces like it’s nothing.” “Like it’s nothing?” he asks. “Like it’s nothing.” “Yes,” he says. “That is infinitely more psychotic.” Johnny trots through a course of round tables. “Zen dump,” he says. “Zen dump?” I ask. “Pooping according to Buddhism?” “Zen dump!” exclaims Johnny, jigging as he sings:

“When you sit on the potty And think nothing naughty The movement begins in your bowels, But if you huff and you puff And your anus rebuffs, Your sit-down does end up in howls!”

“Zen dump,” I say. “Empty your brainbox, relax your sphincter and voila, rectal pyrotechnics.” “Fools,” says Bo Jean. “You constipated Americans are, how to say, so full of shit.” “True,” I say. “But the French are generally pooped out.” The lunch bell rings and I write in my journal,J4 ducking beneath the table at the sound of Mrs. Ramblin’s footsteps. I sit cross-legged on the floor, slightly hunched, wanting to massage out a kink in the neck but noncommittal. Staring into the table’s underbelly, I tell myself unconvincingly that I should sit here through third lunch, wondering if I would attract attention by hiding out of sight. “Surprise!” says Ana, sitting on the shoulders. “Whatcha doin’ down there?” “Waiting for you,” I say, jumping up and spinning circles. She pulls at hairs like the reins to a bridle. “Put me down!” “I’m Atlas holding up his world!” “No you’re just a baby! And I’ll squish you!” She puffs out her stomach, struggling to collect rolls of skin. “See, look, I’m preggers with bear cubs!” I skip a figure-eight through two round tables as the lunchroom fills up, lapping once, twice, finally bending the knees so Ana can disembark onto a tabletop. She assumes a strict pose, leaning down and peering over me; twinkle-glaring, she titters, hand to mouth, and jumps from the table, wrapping her legs around me like a koala up a tree trunk. “You make me feel like a bushel of eucalyptus leaves,” I say. “Damn straight,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “Is that what I think it is?” “Yes, it’s blood.” “Babe! Sit down, I’m wiping that off.”

“No, it’s a social experiment.” “I don’t like it,” she says. “But whatever you say.” As we sit, Ana’s friends us. They toss me strange looks before turning away, talking amongst themselves. Bami returns soon after, hugely pleased with himself. “I made a girl faint,” he says, taking Laney’s banana as she struggles to crack the stem. “Hey! That’s mine!” she says. Bami turns the banana upside down and pinches the bottom, halving the peel into two flaps. “Because monkeys are smarter than all of you,” he says, eating the banana whole. “You’re bloody,” says Laney. “War dance!” he cries. Then addressing me, says: “Did I forget to tell you? We have blood on our faces.” “You look like serial killers,” says one of Ana’s friends. “I love serial killers!” says Bami. “But you look like the type of girl who likes a good rapist. Don’t you lust for a good raping.” “You are sick,” says Ana. “Role-play with Patrick Bateman, then talk to me about sick,” he says. “What is wrong with you?” she asks. “He’s laughing inside,” I say. “I could kill all of you,” says Bami. “Right now, I could kill all of you in front of all these idiots and nobody could prove it. Fuck it, I could kill all these morons and none of you would believe it. Don’t think I would, because I’m not homicidal—but then again you don’t have to be homicidal to kill a gaggle of morons. kids, it’s not genocide when it’s stupid people.”

He grills his red teeth; I laugh, and some of the table chuckles uncomfortably, thinking, deep down, that they believe him. “You are a sociopath,” says Ana. “You don’t know what a sociopath is—don’t hold your breath, I’ll tell you. Sociopaths lack social conscience. What does that mean? You don’t know it, but conscience is metonymy for consciousness; translation: learn English. The OED is an ode.” He looks amongst us. “In advanced people such as myself, conscience and consciousness are one. Now what do we about sociopaths? Sociopaths don’t and won’t because they can’t vicariously empathize with the flip side. Please tell me you see the difference. I can do you, Laney, Christopher, anybody. Watch me become your reality. I modulate my voice because I diversify my perspective. Try me. Give me eight seconds per person and I’ll perform seven and a half people per minute. None of you could do two in sixty seconds and you say I’m the nutsack.” “I don’t need to be seven people per minute,” says Ana, standing up and pushing in her chair. “I am sorry you do.” “Menarche!” he says. “But don’t confuse yourself. It’s not that I need to be, it’s that I can, and it’s not that you don’t need to be, it’s that you can’t. You’re alone in your world, little girl, and I’m not sorry for it.” “I’m trying very hard not to get angry,” says Ana. “So I am walking away.” “Come on,” says Bami, “Give me mine.” “No, you don’t deserve it,” she says. “Very good,” he says to himself, watching her go. He holds up his hands and finger-dances our aspects like marionettes. “I’m playing with all of you,” he says. I catch up with Ana, scanning the selection of hot foodstuff. One plate of spaghetti moats with watery red sauce. Suspicious of meals too longly heatlamped, I serve myself a dish of oiled pasta without the lumpy red sauce. As I tong a load of noodles, a lunch lady pinches it; naturally I resist, but the plate is

dishwasher-slick and slips through the fingers. Noodles spill to the floor. “Sir, it’s not self-serve,” she says, displeased. “What’s wrong with that plate there?” Looking up, I identify the fiend who has thwarted my effort to feed, smiling at her with pursed lips, smoothing the mischief from their creases. “There was only one, so I decided to leave it for the guy behind me—although he’s not there yet, but I’m sure he will be.” “Why you laughing?” she asks. “I’m not your buddy. You see me joking with you?” “I’m not laughing,” she says flatly, wanting me to feel bad. “That’s what I find the most confusing,” I say. “How seriously do you take your job?” “I can’t take my job seriously? Because I’m a lunch lady? I don’t take you seriously, rich boy, wearing your wack Mickey Mouse shirt and your hair flying away like you just woke up.” “I did just wake up,” I say, distracted, and then excited. “I didn’t mean to offend you, but this is excellent. You’re voicing an existential narration of displeasure. You’re lashing out by reaping sensory data to use against me as verbal munitions: my wack shirt, my messy hair. You don’t take me seriously because I don’t take myself seriously, which is why I can’t fathom as to why you take your job seriously. I can’t seem to find anything of serious value. That, and I thought I was speaking the truth. You hate your job. You’re annoyed with us rich little fuckers who act like we own the place. I’m simply stating a fact and am in no way indicating an opinion. You’re pissed off and unhappy, and under the guise of taking your job seriously, you’ll take it out on whoever, whenever you can.” “So I’m unhappy? Do I look unhappy to you? If all ya’ll—” “You’re arguing with yourself,” I say, peering into her. “Can I ask you a question? I’m purely curious: were you listening to what I was saying, or were you thinking of what you were going to say next? Because I feel like it was the latter. You can always tell, it’s in their eyes. But you did pick up on one word. Unhappy set you off, which means—”

“Boy, you being a smart ass? Don’t think I can’t jump over this counter just cuz I’m obese. And don’t you think cuz you’re pretty I won’t break my nails in you. You think you bloody now, then you ain’t seen bloody.” “Are you actually upset?” I ask. “Hells yes I’m upset!” “Granted,” I say, diplomatically. “Why?” “You are crazy if you think I’m gonna answer to you.” “I’m not being a smartass, but why? These things are interesting to me because —” “Sorry!” says Ana to the lunch lady, taking me under the arm. “Tsk tsk.” “What?” I ask. “Nothing, nothing,” she says, smiling. “You being you.” “Not even!” I say, letting on a smile. “She pissed herself off.” “You pissed her off!” “I was perplexed as to why she cared so much. I can’t ever caring about anything as much as she cared about me not serving myself a plate of noodles.” “What’s wrong with you?” she asks, laughing. “I’m some sort of autistic.” “No you’re not. Where’s your food?” “On the floor behind the counter,” I say. “I was despoiled and my noodles perished.” “You have to eat! Bears need food!” “I’m not hungry,” I say. “Blanket-termed vodka?”

She juts out her hip; I reach inside her purse, search its depths, and fish out the plastic water bottle, screwing off the cap. “It’s not alcohol,” I say, sniffing. “Mm-hmm, yes it is.” “Fine, take the first shot.” “I wanted to pretend,” she says, pouting. “I can’t drink today because I am the newest official member of the cross-country team and I want to kick everyone’s butt.” “Okay, tomorrow we’ll share a fifth for breakfast. You’ll sober up by practice.” “I know you’re making fun of me,” says Ana, “but I do like to drink in the morning if I’m hungover. Like a beer or two for breakfast.” “Me too, and a bottle of gin for lunch.” “I am not an alcoholic!” “And for dinner—” I say, but she jabs me in the ribs. Hodge has ed the table, paired off with Brís, sitting with their heads together. “Does anyone have a fruit snack?” I ask. “Here,” says Laney, throwing me a bag of gummies. “Thanks,” I say, tossing them back. “But I mean fruit snack. Not that gelatin sweet tart waist product. An apple. Grapes. A Georgia peach—which is probably from South Carolina. Anything with a crisp and juicy crunch to it.” “Gay,” says Laney, laughing, looking questioningly to Ana. “I can outdo myself,” I say. “Take your banana. I relish the mild-sweet sink of its lush and savor, the tender melt of its flesh all a-tickle about the tongue—like baby food. Of course, if a queer theorist heard that he’d say I was speaking in heavy, homoerotic undertones.” “Yeah!” says Ana, laughing. “Because you’re a huge faggot! You’d listen to Tegan and Sara if they were Steven O’Hara.”

“That’s reasonable.” “Not remotely!” she says. And leaning into me, asks: “Are you gay for me? I am totally gay for you.” “I hear you read,” says Laney. “You write poetry and love Shakespeare. No way —you are gay, aren’t you?” “Got me,” I say. “I’m a huge faggot.” “Fact is fact,” she says. “Or fiction,” I say. “I don’t write poetry, I jot down what comes to me, and I read Shakespeare the same as the rest of you, for class. So what if I think it’s brilliant.” “Faggot,” says Laney, vocal frying. “I’m a queer theorist and I call faggot.” “What the theorist says is negligible. I am what I am. Shakespeare was what he was. Come to think of it, with as many voices as Shakespeare had, I’m sure he had a gay one.” “Aw,” says Laney, looking to Ana. “He’s sensitive.” “God,” I say, mock-exasperated. “Devour me, you independent, man-eating dykes.” “Where is that boy?” asks Laney. “Bami?” I ask. “Yea, your butt buddy.” “You’re talking to Bami?” “Talking dirty,” says Bami, a hand on the shoulder. “Doing the no-pants dance,” chimes in Ana. “Bumping uglies,” says Laney.

“The penis-cum-vagina,” says Hodge. “No,” says Brís, laughing. “Latin doesn’t work.” “What’s this malarkey about Shakespeare and faggots?” Bami asks. “I’m a huge faggot,” I say. Looking him dead straight in the eyes, I tongue the lips. “Ah!” says Ana. “You are gay!” But Bo Jean deafens us: “Gay? What means gay? If a man is comfortable with sexuality, he will say of a beautiful man: This man is good looking. He is attractive to me. That is natural, no? If he says no, he lies. So I say to you, cupboard homosexual: Suck a dick. Empower yourself with beefy scepters. To you, insecure heterosexual, I say: Man up you faggot and unclench your butt cheeks. Faggot means not homosexual, no? It means, how to say, douche-bag. So, to douche-bag faggots, I say: Be confident. Confidence, how to say, gets you laid. Girls love me because I am sexy. Women sex me because I am confident.” “I think I hate you,” says Ana, in an off-handed potency. “Whoever you call yourself. Bo John. Bami. Arrogant fuckass.” Bo leans forward. “My piquancy is unsavory to you because you detect a familiar spice. What is it you taste, tiny girl?” Ana stares daggers, and I dramatize the presentation of her features; that in this moment I am spooked, awed, silenced. She irradiates an aura of absolute blackout. The eloquence of her body language speaks volumes. Bo whispers at her, hypnotizing her with the lilt of his voice, flute-borne, versifying the design of their vices. Composed, tranquil, Ana becomes like the naja, a cobra, the black thing rising from her wicker basket. It draws her mouthparts tender with contempt, and dims the bright of her eyes, unmasking the face that morning dons to call forth the abstractions of dusk. “Ana!” says Laney, jogging us to our senses. Bo phases into Bami and Ana falls into me. “It’s not homosexual if it’s Brad Pitt,” says Hodge, looking around the table.

The table erupts in laughter; it’s in how he says it, the earnest determination of a child defending his point of view. “You’re hotter than Brad Pitt,” says Brís lovingly, batting him with fluttering lashes. “Brad is physically uned for and is therefore ineligible in the nominal selection of mates,” says Hodge. “Personal preference is not grounded in free will. The golden ratio of sex appeal probabilistically calculates a higher ratio for the external beauty of Brad.” “Shut up and take off your shirt,” says Brís, and Hodge shuts up, unsure what to say, do—wondering whether he should take off his shirt. To Hodge’s rescue, I say: “It’s true, though. What guy can say that he didn’t have a man-crush on the picture of Brad Pitt as Tyler Duren in Fight Club? Standing there breathless and red-splattered in the die-off—echoing with maniacal, devil-may-care laughter. He’s the desperate anguish of the hopelessly mindfucked. Call me gay, but Tyler Durden is the alter ego of the everyman.” “Yeah, look, that’s normal,” says Laney. “It’s Bami we should worry about. He hides behind Bo Jean because he’s a faggot.” “Oy, crumpet,” says Bami, adopting an English accent, “leave off ‘fore I throw you a nibble—I bugger the birds. Now nosh off this tenner, cuz there ain’t a broad abroad can call me a poof an’ not choke on her cockup.” When he throws a ten dollar bill at her, Ana assaults him. I don’t hear her words —both done in and undone by her voice. “Can’t say I anticipated that demonstration of violence,” says English Bami, holding up his hands. To Laney, he says: “Didn’t intend nothing offensive by crumpet, but truth is strumpet’s contextually nearer the framework I had in mind when I doodled your picture. Crayoned you in nicely, I did. I tell you this thing though; crumpet or strumpet, you call me poofter a-gain and I’ll spread you like butter. Tell you what, I’ll make you au fait with the English breakfast biscuit— tart you up hard and heavy with jam and cream. Now if you don’t like the sound a’ that consider yourself officially precautioned. You don’t want to be balls-up in it with the size of my lot.”

Bami stands and parades around the table, wrapping his hands around Laney’s waist, dragging them down to her hips. Kissing her hard, she strains her neck as he pulls away. “Impressive,” says Laney. “You lived in England?” “Virtually,” says Bami, laughing. “I troll British websites.” And g out, he says: “Drink sperm, bitches. You’ll live longer.”

. . .

When I return from the bathroom, the class is in uproar. “Cockfight, my nudies!” cries Bami. “Take bets, Johnny. Betty, give me that camera!” Mrs. Ramblin stomps about, laughably fruitless, failing to solve the algorithms of the problem child. To Bami, chaos is not only an algorithm of the highest order, but an invocation of godsend; effectively, Johnny is sent to the office, told to turn himself in to the principal. Ana, seeing me in the doorway, precedes Johnny out of the classroom. “I thought I would hate it here, but I like it,” she says, sitting against the wall. “I do miss Atlanta, but I feel like here is where I’m supposed to be right now. Do you know what I mean?” “I do,” I say. “And at the same time I don’t. I live by the maxim: Say what you mean, and mean more than what you say—but it’s impossibly difficult to articulate the things that make the most sense. Like you and me. I don’t know what we mean, but we make sense.” Ana nibbles her lip, chin to knees, her eyes like aircrafts performing lofty maneuvers, moving to slow-spinning patterns of thought. When she turns to me, her gaze is heavy and weighs me down.

Johnny jangles with enthusiasm as he returns, dressed in a plaid blazer, blue tie, and grey woolen tros; baggy—hemmed in at the waistline by a series of folds, producing a ruffled indentation in the groin area. Bifocal glasses prop low on his nose. As if showing me a badge, he flashes a note scribbled in Mr. Naps’ handwriting, entering the classroom. “Mrs. Teach,” he announces. “Johnny has turned himself into Mr. Principle.” “Johnny—” “Mrs. Teach,” he says, “Johnny is in my office with a Mr. Learn. They, erm, await you.” Mrs. Ramblin utters incoherent audibles—calling it this way, then that. “A note,” he says. “It reads: ‘The fool must mind the teacher when the teacher loses her mind!’” There’s the sound of silence followed by a quiet scuffle and the fine-ripping of paper. “Faithless children!” cries Mrs. Ramblin. “Smut!” “Shit, she’s coming,” I say. Ana and I cut across the main hall and flatten ourselves behind a row of lockers, just as Mrs. Ramblin powerwalks out of the classroom: erect, proud, demanding respect. She plods forward as if wearing a yoke about her shoulders, plowing through the empty hallway with Johnny in tow, pulled along by the flap of his blazer. “Unbelievable!” she says. “Disobedient! Pagans! Misbehaved! Ungodly!”¹⁸ “Hey,” I say, looking to Ana as we slide down the wall. “Hi,” she says, a whisper, looking back. “What do you believe?” I ask. “Not like Mrs. Ramblin’s god and dogma, but generally?” “Let us see. I believe in my friends, and I believe in love: I love running. I love dancing and vodka and sneaking into clubs. I love spring break and water and the sun. I love hanging with the crazies. I love the extraordinary and surprises,

but I also love the ordinary. Mostly I love talking and forking and jumping on bears!” When she glances at me, I say: “You make me smile.” Taken off guard, she double takes—mumming out a lip-contortion that lights up her face like the concept of her soul. “What I love is what makes me me,” she continues, recovering. “I guess that means I don’t believe in what I hate. I hate arrogance. Arrogant people kill me. I know he’s your bestie, but that is why I am so often upset with Bami.” “He’s not arrogant.” “He is arrogant!” she says. “But it’s all a joke to him.” “Agree to disagree,” she says. “What do you believe in?” “I don’t believe what they tell us, just because it’s what they tell us. Other than that, I don’t know what I believe or disbelieve. Maybe all of it. In of human perception, there are too many contradictions. Sometimes I think that all those things that don’t make sense make perfect sense in not making sense. It’s a mess, accepting and denying yourself, believing in everything and nothing.” “You do say the strangest things,” she says. “But you didn’t tell me about you. What do you believe in? People? Challenges? Love?” “You used love in of what you love: running and vodka and spring break, but do you always love your favorite things? Oftentimes I want nothing to do with science, music, driving, math. Maths. I used to obsess over them—math is ubiquitous, but the ultimate equations eluded me. I looked for them everywhere, but I’m too human. I know I can’t see them.” “That’s sad,” she says. “You need to try harder. You can see anything if you imagine it.” “It isn’t sad,” I say. “It’s the truth. And I believe it.”

“Do you believe in yourself?” she asks. “I don’t know what that means,” I say, unthinkingly. “I do,” she says. “I believe in you.” Because she believes in what she loves, says a voice; and I nod, avoiding eye .

. . . J5

I churn the dregs in a handle of scotch. It whirlpools and the Garden door swings open, Bami in the threshold underarming a brown grocer’s bag overflowing with red plastic cups. “You troglodyte,” he says. “Why do you own a phone? No, don’t. Don’t answer me.” “Why?” “Because I don’t ask questions when I know the answer,” he says. “You’ll say ‘I don’t know’ and I don’t want to hear it. Ergo, fuck off.” “Why are you upset?” I ask. “True or false: You drove me to the liquor store three hours ago, waited five fucking minutes and MIA’d. True or false: You left me and four kegs at the liquor store.” “Oh . . . true,” I say, laughing. “No, that’s true. I totally forgot.” “Give me your phone,” he says, looking around. “My cellularity?” I ask, as sophomores haul a keg inside. “Here,” he says, tossing it over. “Text Ana to bring her hot friends. No ugly bitches.”

Me: Bami says to bring your hot friends. But no uglies. Ana: I am not picking and choosing. I just won’t come. Me: Good. Leave the hotties at home. Bring only ugly bitches. Juggling the cellularity with an unused inkwell, I wander into the kitchen, following the light burning scent of sulfur. “What are you doing?” I ask, looking into the bathroom. “Shaving,” says Bami. “With a lighter?” I ask. “Interesting—plus I kind of like the smell of burning hair.” “Weirdo.” “You’re shaving with an open flame and I’m the weirdo?” “Weird is the new normal.” He takes off his shirt and looks for chest hairs the way a monkey grooms for bugs; laughing to myself, I kill the scotch, noting the instant spread of warmth and how the lungs seem to flutter with diffusive tingles. The effect is instantaneous; a sip and people make sense. I swipe a handle of Jack, some cigarettes and go for a walk. The moon is orange. Pulling from the whisky, I circle the square, watching the Garden bait gnomes. They come and vegetate—early-goers and scandent socialites—loitering about and small-talking on the pavement; gradually they edge indoors to the crawl of ivy and creeping plants, spreading like gossip through rooms and around corners. Wallflowers climb the walls, wanting, ripening, waiting to be eaten up like fruits from the grapevine. Here we eat from the trees. Madcaps and funsters uproot the voices of quiet and shy persons; whose personalities flourish with drink, their thoughts slowing down as conversations pick up. But those unpicked—the brooding drupes, the unsightly—they fall and spoil and throw themselves out, making space for the lives-of-the-party who

branch out and multiply. Sitting at the fountain, I drag from the whisky as an old lady hobbles through Lafayette; a local by the look of her, regal, aristocratic. She stops and looks me up and down, giving me a savvy old lady smile. “Worse than my husband,” she says, drawling a charming Southern accent. “Yea?” I ask spiritedly, exhaling a tangible heartiness. “No shame,” she says. “Off the wagon again.” “Get him out here,” I say, toasting her. “I’ll drink the old fraud to an early grave.” “A better way to go,” she says. “I have a mind to poison his Laphroaig.” “I dare say she’s serious,” I say, as she goes, addressing Jack.¹ The Garden burns with life. We booze and blaze, the whisky our wildfire— Hodge naked and bright-flaming crimson, blotchy, flushed, roving with a bottle of gin. A group of girls mob him, giggling, asking if they can take a picture; I lean in and say why not, but they scatter because Brís ambushes him just as Ana jumps me like surprise; I piggyback and gyrate her, smiling at the feel of hugs inside the lungs that I upchuck at people with random outbursts of laughter. It’s an inexplicable joy that grows explosively and ejaculates like warmth through a cold and rusty pipe. We knock about and Ana insults our victims with sorries: “No one will have sex with you. I’m sorry you have an ugly wiener!” “Nice makeup. I’m sorry nobody buys your hot girl disguise!” “Oops! Not intentional. Sorry! Your babies will be brain dead.” “Wow,” I say, “You really hate people.” “Not remotely. My brother always says: An insult a day keeps the ego at bay.” “I like that. I expect a daily insult.”

“Why?” she asks, piercingly. “You don’t need to be insulted.” The air is thick with a collective of odors: people and their perspirations. Ana tells ersby to open their mouths like birdies and pours for them Jack; effortlessly she inspires guys to take nine, ten-second pulls before they gag and spit-up; and we’ve traded Jack for Jim—there being a group of branded maniacs cheering us on; and Ana, still piggybacking, holds up Jim for me and I pull and she’s screaming that everyone is bitches and I stumble to the door and breathe out the swill of bodies, sweat and alcohol. Newcomers, smokers, and teetotalers intermingle on the pavement, parting like the sea when Bami spills out of the Garden. “Humans!” he says, looking them over. “Your mortality rate is one hundred percent.” They look amongst themselves. “But hell is where the party’s at!” The outsiders rallied, he sashes a climbing rope across his chest like a bandoleer, untaps a keg, buoys it up and trots into the square. “Let’s get out of here,” I say, as the party follows him outside. “But my friends—” “Will be fine,” I say. “I’m taking you to Little Tybee.” Ana inserts a CD, and we underbelly around Lafayette with the windows rolled down, driving slowly, watching as Bami scales a tree and ties off the rope. People crowd around him as he descends, performing his signature upside-down Spiderman kegstand. I break for a girl in heels as she toddles between sidewalks, raising high her red cup. “She walks like the chicken that crossed the road,” I say, unwittingly out loud. “You walk like the chicken that crossed the road!” yells Ana, a drive-by. Her hand in mine, I squeeze, incidentally accelerating on the expressway. She grabs the rough-riding grip and hops out the window, seated on the windowsill; on cruise control I do the same; upon seeing me, she closes her eyes and internalizes the whip of airflow through her hair. Inner peace is the still of death,

but outside, to me, she’s a mare running down the night, her shock of blackbrunette made savage by the wind. Crossing the bridge to Tybee, I tug on her anklet, and she ducks inside.² As we blur past beach homes baroque with islandware, I serenade her under the breath, so that she tells me to sing louder because she wants to hear my voice. “I don’t even know the name of the song,” I shout. “‘Isis,’” she says, “it’s the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.” And she says: “You probably don’t like them because you’re a faggot!” “No, I like the lyrics,” I say, dialing down the volume as we park at Johnny’s. The Warlocks’ garage is a reservoir for watercraft, stocked with kayaks, canoes, a homemade raft, several jet skis, and a rowboat docked on a trailer. I hitch the trailer to an ATV and load it with blankets; thick, grooved tires kicking up sand as we cruise down the beachfront. Pointing across Back River, into the black, I say: “Little Tybee’s there.” I park the ATV, and Ana stands in the shallows, statuesque, anchoring the rowboat. With her hand to the gunwale, it rocks like a cradle. Her skirt blows eastward, along with her hair, beaten like flags by the wind. I stride into the shallows, startling her, but she’s lost out there and her gaze returns to find itself. Abreast, I feel for her hand; fingers graze, and fingers grapple. “Hhwew,” she says, as we cross into the Atlantic, maybe an hour later, rowing down the coastline. She talks big ideas for the two of us, speaking of our future versions who exist years from now. I’m surprised that she sees us together then, assuming that this is a fling, the throes of a quick, consumptive love. That I’m a pastime to her real boy. But in not allowing myself to think that she’s mine, I realize that it’s me, not her, who considers this a fling; that this is my quick, consumptive love. Beached, we gather kindle from the shrubbery: twigs, and thin branches with dry leaves. “The driftwood’s all damp,” I say. “I’ll scavenge for dead logs.”

“I’m coming,” she says. The sand gives over to forest floor, and we edge onto the underbrush; as a dim horizon unveils, the bowels call us by name, and we wake the slumbering wood. “It’s scary,” says Ana; her brow coldly sweats. “Imagine it’s a dreamscape,” I say, squinching. “The trees are sleepwalkers. They sway and breathe. Their canopies are the umbragical skulls of scatterbrained giants.” “I don’t like it,” she says, studying the penetralia. “I won’t quote Genesis,” I say, striking a lighter, “but God’s an artist. See? From darkness he drew light and anointed spacetime with color.” “Why do you like darkness?” she asks, holding me back. “I want to say I see through it,” I say, leading her inward, “but that sounds more pretentious than clever. To put it simply, in the dark I become like a planted seed. The soil’s where I conceive-of and create, but also consume and destroy. Blackness is a whiteboard, our blank slate, the womb of creation. Just look up. There’s the universe, primarily dark, both a birthplace for stars and the necropolis of supernovas.” “I see,” she says. “Do you think there’s anything faster than the speed of light?” “No, I don’t think so. Do you?” “Yes I do,” I say. “But in a certain light, I think darkness is as well. The universe has been expanding since the Big Bang, and ever since, light has been struggling to keep up.” Lost in it, I say: “I don’t know. The black doesn’t scare me. It’s what I am inside.” “What?” she asks, vocally bristled.

“Not like what you see in certain people. Not that kind of blackness.” “Can we go now?” she asks, her voice razed by the acoustic hackles. We drop our woodpiles by the boat. Ana nibbles her underlip while I light some tinder. The fire burns tall like steeples, and we lie down in the fringe of orange heat. “I was forever afraid of the dark,” she says. “When I was little I imagined the craziest things. Like I would see strangers and they wanted to hurt me. Of course my parents asked who they were. I don’t think they were worried at first, but it did get pretty bad.” “Did they think you were schizophrenic?” I ask. “Um, they thought maybe. I my dad asking me this one time where the strangers were, so I closed my eyes and said: ‘My eyes have to show me.’ But no, Christof, I’m not schizophrenic. I was super-imaginative thank you very much. I even had an imaginary friend. Oh my god, my parents got so fed up with her!” In her other voice, that of a mischievous child—momentarily uppity—she says: “I’m not telling you her name because only I know her name.” She laughs. “But that’s me, the crazy little girl with the superactive imagination. Okay, maybe not so little. It’s still bad. I hate being home alone. If I go home and nobody’s there I’ll call all my friends to come over, then run around the house finding blankets to hide under until they get there. It’s irrational, but it’s like I can’t get the idea out of my head because someone other than me is thinking it.” She bites her lips together and minces out a smile. “Do you still like me?” “Now that you mention it—” “You have to like me!” she says, jabbing me. “Because I said so.” “Oh, is that why?” “Also, because . . . I like you too.” Minutes later, she asks: “What scares you? I don’t think anything does.”

“The ocean,” I say. “I’m enchantingly afraid. It embodies the unknown—not knowing something, everything, that’s what scares me. And that I have no control over it; that my identity is lost beneath the surface.” I chew on it. “I had an imaginary friend, too, but as I grew older he split into three.” “Three?” she asks. “Yea, I outgrew two of them. They went by Mac and Cam.” “What about the third?” “He’s around.” “What’s his name?” she asks. “Can I meet him?!” I laugh. “Do you think we’re fucked?” “Probably,” she says. “Like how?” “In of us, but also mankind. I have no hope for myself, for the future, for anything. If things don’t change we won’t be here much longer. It’s sequentially obvious, but there’s also this gut feeling of impending doom. I can’t tell if it’s just me or everyone, but I know I’m fucked. It’s an abstract certainty. An intuitive prediction—which is weird, because when I first met you, I thought: This girl will change everything.” “I know,” says Ana, speaking slowly. “When I saw you . . . you changed me. Then I had the craziest butterflies! No one gives me butterflies. Not ever!” “Huh,” I say, staring off. “I’m serious! I was mad at you.” “Because of the butterflies,” I say. “Mm-hmm.” “I wanted to run away. Or say something stupid.”

“Me too,” she says. “I’m glad we didn’t.” “We could though.” “What?” she asks. “Run away,” I say, picking her up and sprinting into the ocean. It’s cold, huge, black. We separate and I glide into a breaststroke; stopping, floating, watching myself swim into the unknown, down the continental shelf, flutter kicking, fingering shell and rock and seaweed. Spasms remind me to breathe, but I suspend weightlessly between extremes. The chest quakes violence through the limbs, and the trachea threatens closure, as if to quench my thirst for breath.²¹ But the body subverts me, rebelling, rising against the heartless spectator in nameless insurrection; it emerges from the shallow depths like some sort of awakening, feet to the ground, arms in the air, the throat opening to that of an anaconda swallowing its asphyxiated prey; whole, funneling a vortex of seawater and air. Breath, like inspiration. The knees collapse, thuds in the seabed, water at the waist. Ana attacks and splashes me, uttering verbal strings recognizably linguistic. The mind isn’t here right now, says the brain; her words go unprocessed. She kneels behind me, hugging on, her arms wrapped up and over the shoulders so that her fingers curl into the clavicles, holding me like handlebars—tight, shaking, as if struggling to do a pull up. I toss the head back, looking to the stars as her lips press against the spine. They quiver a haunting, mussitations, so that she mouths, sounds out: Don’t do it, don’t leave me, not like that. And I realize I could have been under for several minutes. I wrap the hands around and clasp the small of her back, pulling her close. “Talk to me,” she says, shivering. “When I was twelve, my Nona told me a story of two cousins who drowned before I was born, which was why I couldn’t play alone at the lake. I

thinking to myself: I won’t drown, so I sat on my bed every night before turning out the lights, and held my breath, until two years ed and I could hold my breath for four minutes, well into the breakpoint, when my lungs shook— thinking that this is a formative experience, that I will be prepared if it comes to drowning. I won’t panic. I won’t drown. “It’s funny. If you could kill yourself by holding your breath, I might have committed the life I was preparing to save from drowning to a death in which I asphyxiated by being so prepared.” “You do those things to scare me,” she mutters, drunk, maybe crying. We seesaw with the waves. Teeter and totter—thinking about her tits rubbing against the back, and that I wish I could reach inside and know her pain, whatever it is; that I could share it, feel something as she does in order to relate; simply because she takes my breath away, and while I don’t know what that means, it’s something, and I’ll exploit it for all it’s worth—to live on the loss of a breath, breath after breath, until I’m lying there, breathing, dying, and just the sight of her steals death’s kiss, my last breath never breathed but stopped dead in its tracks. The bonfire rages on the beach, a pillar of aerial lava; its summit whips and detaches in leaping crescents. They look like sonic booms. I take a blanket and throw it out, holding on to one end and gliding it downwards; shrugging Ana to one side, off the shoulder, catching her as I lay her down. She watches unseeingly until the shock of stability opens her eyes. “Come here,” she says, tugging lightly on the St. Christopher necklace that pendulates above her navel, an old present from Hodge. She kisses me once, twice, slowly, longingly. Then knees me in the gut and sues for whisky. “Stupid boy,” she says, cute, surly. She glistens in the firelight, sashaying into her black-lace boy shorts. “A giant must be close by. Look, I found his shirt.” It’s white and swallows her, worn like a jersey frock, or the raiment of cloud nymphs; she stretches down on its hemming as she struts, so the cotton shapes to her buttocks and breasts, wetly stained. She glides her hips with a subtle swing, standing over me; I open and she pours. Tossing the handle aside, she pulls up

her shirt, slow, cinematically, and straddles me. She’s either learned something from the movies or is mocking them, I think, kissing her in the xiphoid process, lightly at first, then intensely, almost laughing. She thumbs an ear, and I’m electrified, pushing me down as she stalks the chest with kisses, up the neck; intuned, not overdoing it, skilled in the art of deferred gratification. And I learn how to feel her; what she responds to, where she tightens when I touch her. I cup her tits and laugh, informing her that I’m throwing her bra into the fire—“No!” she says, and I grab and kiss her hard, rolling until I’m kneeling with fingers tucked into her panties. “What’s the rush?” she asks, coherent, pulling me down by St. Christopher. And she says: “What’s the rush,” speaking from elsewhere. We sit up with backs to the fire, and our shadows dance for us, shaking off our inertias to assume their own forms. Slender and lengthy, they drink from the water. Heat roasts the spine’s curvature, so I wiggle fingers and toes into the nethersands, cool as dungeon air, so that, buried alive, around me, the phalanges throb like heartbeats in quicksand. Ana sifts granules, thinking thoughts she doesn’t share. She swigs and dangles out the whisky, letting it fall to the muffled thud of sand displacement, and stands—dressed in umbra, firelight, silence; sculpting footprints in the wet sand. Glancing over her shoulder, she shakes her head no, saying: I need to face this giant alone, and walks into the ocean. There are strangers in the whitecaps. Maybe she drowns them. I flare nostrils and swill, cringing as she emerges topless, dripping, chokeholding her hair as she comes to me. She sheds droplets that crater the dry sand with the detailed special effects. “We need more wood,” I say. “No more wood,” she says, slipping off her boy shorts. “Come ’ere.” I stare, slightly confused. “Come here,” she repeats.

“Are you sure?” I ask, pointing down. “Because technically that’s wood.” “Shut up,” she says, and I kiss her, and it’s happening, but she says it hurts, and we slow down—our breathing, our pace of exploration. Then we are animals breathing heavily, made of a fresh, viscous sweat. A breeze chills the backwash of our rape, and she laughs to herself with the drunken forgetfulness of something pleasured. Listening to her thoracic rumble, mutually valenced, I think: Here, with Ana, is wherever I belong; like this we could be anywhere. “Do you see us in the stars?” she asks. “Yes,” I say, tracing dots. “That star too!” she says. “It’s our vodka.” We constellate ourselves all over the celestial spheres. The bonfire gutters to molten ash, and I bury the embers to insulate the heat, sitting on it, like a mattress warmed by hot pads. Ana throws the blanket around our shoulders, staring off and tightly bundled. Waves lap the oceanfront, and we settle into the beach like an overnight sandcastle. “ that song I wanted to play for you?” I ask, untangling the cords. “Mm-hmm,” she says, listening. “I’ve been waiting. What’s it called?” “‘Weird Fishes.’” “Play it again,” she says. I scrub the song back to zero. Ana feels for me around the earlobe, and we listen with the hang of earbuds between us, our eyes thrown up, wondering what this is.

. . .

Pinkish dawn; the ocean smells light and tangy, and squawking seagulls fly against the skyline. I smile involuntarily, not about anything in particular, but feeling it build in the optical organs, an abnormal moisture that the wind blows over. I run into the water and freestyle five meters out, lapping the shoreline within sight of camp. The skin tightens from cold and exercise, existentially detached, wondering how to describe the way it feels to move through water. Ana runs into the shallows when I wade shoreward, to the splash of fleetingly disturbed puddles. “Good morning!” she says, jumping on me. “You’re up early.” “How are you?” I ask. “Happy—except I wanted to wake up with you. Like always you weren’t there.” “Because you’re a sleep monster.” “I want to wake up to you for once,” she says. “That’s definitely arrangeable.” “And you can call me once in a while,” she says. “I won’t mind.” “Just to say hi,” she explains. “Texts are nice but your voice is my new alky.” “I’m serious, Christopher, can you answer my calls?” she asks. “It’s not that much to ask. I am not needy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to care. Because I do want that.” “I do care,” I say. “Then act like it!” I’m confused. “I won’t act, but—” “Take off your shirt.” “It is off.” “You know what I mean.”

“Actually—” “Shut up,” she says. Half in laugh, half retortive, I flash a toothy, play-crazy grin—that of a lion in silent roar. Then I blow trumpet on the tongue, splattering her with the mockinsensitivity of a four-year-old. “Ah!” she says. “Keep it on! I don’t care anymore.” But I pick her up by the waist and hold her up in front of me. “I already told you,” I say, looking into her. “I’m Atlas holding up his world.” “I believe you now,” she says quickly; and her other voice chirps: “You’re hot.” I ignore her other voice. “Did you black out again?” “No,” she says. “So you ?” “I do,” she says. I throw and crash into her, gliding us into the hotbed as we inhale the saltiness of our ocean spray; it’s quick for both of us and we laugh out together. The sun, higher up, bears lightly down, and Ana breathes abdominally. She rolls onto her side, tracing sands. “I don’t want you hooking up with other girls.” “Okay,” I say, confused by the obvious. “I mean . . . there’s no one else.” “Well that was fun!” she says, falling back over. “Hey, you don’t need to deflect,” I say. “I think I’ve always felt you too.” She opens, closes her mouth, settling for a nod. “It’s weird,” I say. “We’ve known each other for nearly two months now, but it’s like I’ve known you for millennia, while simultaneously acknowledging how

little I know about you. I’ve never even asked how old you are.” “Sixteen,” she says. “I turn seventeen in May, for your information. You?” “Seventeen.” “Ah! Almost legal! When’s your birthday?” “Early February,” I say. “How old were you when you first had sex?” “Thirteen, no—fourteen,” she says. “You?” But a surprise letdown takes me, a visceral emotion that I don’t understand. Consciously I don’t care, but somehow the gut feels differently, as if it matters. “Seventeen.” “Do you have a serious ex?” she asks. “No, do you?” “Yes, but he wasn’t a good boyfriend. He would cheat on me.” “Often?” “Yeah, a lot. Sometimes with my friends. Not besties, but girls I knew.” “And you’d get back with him?” “I feel so stupid now, but I loved him. He would cry and—.” Her voice cracks. “Do you still talk?” “No,” she says. “No, I promised myself I would never, ever again be with a cheater.” “Okay, how about this,” I say. “I believe in truth and honesty, so if you hook up with someone, then tell me, and I’ll do the same.” “I just told you I don’t want you hooking up with other girls!” “I mean . . . I won’t, but if it happens it happens. If you hook up with a guy when

you’re drunk or whatever, just tell me. There’s relief in acknowledging human nature. In of the species, we are carnal, fallible creatures. Promiscuity is hardwired into our genes and sexual monogamy is an unnatural construct, a social contract between the sexes. The loophole in the contract is deception, but we can by all that if we’re honest with each other. Infidelity is less important to me than truth.” She nods, silent and unseeingly. “I know you’re thinking this sounds like another excuse,” I say, “but I’m not saying that I’ll cheat and expect you to be fine with it because I forewarned you. What I’m saying is that I’m not perfect, and I’m not fool enough to think you are. Because real lies, the ones that matter, eat at me. Therefore it’s simple—be honest and I’m yours.” “Ok,” she says, barely audible, looking to me. “I do think you’re perfect.” There is a fall in me like the collapse of lungs. “I didn’t mean to get heavy, but it’s important. Don’t lie to me.” “I know,” she says. “I won’t do that to you.” And we laze about. Ana sunbathes naked, while I spelunk into hypnagogia, navigating a world between waking and sleeping where I can think without trying.²² Midday, we row back to Tybee, counting the beachgoers like grains of sand. The suntanned peoples look like freckles on a strip of off-white skin. We park the boat at Johnny’s, but getting in the car, Ana says she wants to swim before we leave. A large sign by Back River reads: DANGER OF DROWNING BEYOND THIS POINT. There are riptides, I say, but it’s low tide and we can walk out to the sandbar, blanketed with seagulls. I say come on, let’s sneak up on them underwater like a pair of crocodiles, so we crawl through the shoal, propelling ourselves forward by digging our hands into the seabed, noses floating along the surface, stalking our prey. We count to three, sprinting through squawkers taking off to the whorl of helter-skelter. Here is madness in a maelstrom, flapping our arms as we run

rampageous with laughter, chasing the flock of a thousand lawless fancies—how our eyes fly after them, soaring on their beating wings. Patterning their formation, I slow down to ire how order comes from chaos, as if method is the most natural force in the universe. But Ana revolts against her human form and runs ahead, screaming for the gulls, a wild woman laughing and jumping and made limitless with energies. She goes swiftly, but her feet pitterpatter splash on the opposite bank, and though hers are fleet-footed splashes, they pluck our eyes from the distance, to remind us that our heels are not plumed; that we can’t fly away. She ruffles her shoulder blades and turns about, backtreading as she looks to me, asking why we can’t go like the birds. It is only the ocean and we can fly until we blackdot the sun. She holds out her arms, testing her wingspan, until her posture slackens and she flutters in the current, to-and-fro, mindful of the bodies that move her. With the idea of herself, she falls backwards into limbo, loosely spread-eagled. She is eyes in the sky, but I face-plant the ocean, so that we float in almost-nothingness, holding hands, suspended between extremes. This is how we fly, I say, words to the water, gurgled, to the uprising of bubbles— little voices popping on the surface.

Spiel Two

6469

Mid-October; the odors of autumn humor the nose. Hungrily I inhale wafts of that watery, brothlike air. A chill ferries pockets of warmth, like the smell of a cottage in the mountains with the windows drawn open—where there is a fire, and the simmer of kettle-made stew. Leaves dapple the pavement, hinting of winter and the organic scent of rot. Their oranges, reds, and yellows rouse the smell of brown. I kick at them, a heaviness in how they scatter, sodden from a recent storm. They leave motley imprints, bled like watercolors down windswept lengths of sidewalk, to the themes of landscape and harvest moon. The leaf prints evoke a forest floor of wetted memories, by which I produce, from within, a filmy-white autumn made in art class—maple leaves preserved in wax paper—so that I scuff at them, at the cement, as if foraging for truffles amid the duff. “Halloween,” says Bami, with relish, sitting in his car. “Everybody dresses up like me.” “Yea?” I ask, plodding back and forth. “Then who will you be?” “Everybody I meet,” he says. “Life is cosplay, and I’m the masquerade.” “Like, oh my god, Bami Easton, how do you contain yourself? You’re so legion.” “Come on,” he says. “I’m the mother-fucking carnival.” “Right,” I say, walking with him, talking to talk. “Let’s see. Halloween. That Friday, I’ll be the Wardenclyffe tower, and Saturday I’ll be Peter Pan to Ana’s Tinker Bell. Or pirates. My Blackbeard to her Anne Bonny. Damn. I would so be a pirate.” “Do you listen to yourself?” he asks, mockingly amused. “I would so be a pirate.”

“Yes, in this world, I would be.” “You Morphean Orpheus,” he says, laughing at the sky. “You and me, basically we’re the same person but with one monster exception, and I’m not talking about my cock.” “I’m a scalar to your vector?” I ask. “Frictional.” “I’m this Orphean Morpheus character, and you’re . . . way more superawesome?” “Cut the airy-fairies,” he says. “I’m a blooming pirate, is what I say when I want to be a pirate. Tell me you see the difference: Where you wake up to dream, I dream to wake up. Where you live in prisms, I live out rainbows.” “That’s well put,” I say. “But it’s more like: Whereas I doubt, you makebelieve.” We seat ourselves at a patio table in front of Vinnie’s, a pizza t. A waitress introduces herself and it’s Bo Jean who special orders a large every-cheese pizza topped with meatballs. Bo flirts with her when she drops the check, snatching a well-read hardback from her server’s apron; he flips to Part Two, scans the first few pages and underlines a quote. Taking her hand, he slips off her ring and sets it to the crease between the pages, manipulating the light in such a way that the ring’s shadow forms a heart in the binding. “Au cœur des ténèbres,” says Bo. Heart of Darkness. “Our hearts are but shadows,” he says, following it up with clever intentions. Introverting, I finger the mesh tabletop, nails worming into empty metal diamonds. The holes slip white rings around the fingertips, their ends flushed redly as rose buds. Pocketing the waitress’ number, Bo crosses his legs. “You come tonight, no?” “To the Seafood Festival?” I ask. “Why are you still going out with that Richmond Hill girl? You won that bet ages ago. She still has no idea as to your

true identity?” “True identity?” he asks. “What is it you imply? I am Bo Jean.” “Well then, Bo, speaking of bets, I told Ana about ours.” “Honesty,” he says, spitting. “Foolish virtue.” “Why?” I ask. “Being honest is easier than lying.” “For you,” he says. “It is easier to speak truth than to hear it, no?” “Why would anyone want to be lied to?” I ask. “The truth doesn’t hurt when you’re honest with yourself—but back to bets. Since you lost, it’s time I made a fool of you.” “Me, lose?” he asks. “I think no.” “Did you win?” I ask. “ire my laurels,” he says, basking in them. “I triumphed you with martial victory.” “I’m not so sure.” “I scored first kiss,” he says. “What mystifies you?” “An idiomatic thumb,” I say, playing it over. “For instance, something about that kiss stuck out like a sore thumb. Or, you thumbed your nose at our rule of thumb. Which means you’re under my thumb, if you thumb my drift.”²³ “Impossible,” he sputters, searching me. “You lie.” But Bami, not finding what Bo’s looking for, says: “Gamble on a fart—Ana squealed.” “No,” I say, grinning. “You did.” “The fuck I did,” he says. “I don’t believe it.” “If it makes you feel better, I didn’t realize it until later, but why else would you

position the kiss so I couldn’t see? Plus it was you, as in Bami, who cried out afterwards, not Bo, so even if your kiss was legitimate, it wasn’t Bo who won the bet, unless, by some twist of logic, you were Bami acting as Bo acting as Bami.” “Sweet minutiae,” he says, ogling me with romantic blinks. “You gongoozle me.” “Gratitude,” I say. “I mean, for well, you know—good intentions and the whatnot.” “Fool,” says Bo, dismissing my attempt at thanks. “Maybe you are not aware, but we are brothers, you and I. The Rubicon compares us—you are toska, I am litost.” “Is that another obscure yet fundamental difference between us?” I ask. “How recondite.” “But yes,” he says. “There is but one more.” “And what’s that?” I ask. “Stooge!” cries Bami. “You’re Mind Dildo and I’m the Mental Douche!” “I will fuck your brains,” I say, holding the arms up like zombie. “Alive, alive!” says Bami, a mad scientist bounding around tables, shaking people. “Mind Dildo is alive. You baboons! He will fuck your brains!”

. . .

The Seafood Festival lazes into dusk, and people digest the roast afternoon. A long outdoor pavilion houses a buffet of grills and eateries built into its margins, resembling coops in a petting zoo, except the animals are finger foods and we eat them. The pavilion is centered by a column of recently made picnic tables that smell freshly of pinewood, and people shuffle through on either side,

browsing and diffusing into lines. Bo and his girlfriend queue up for crab legs and Johnny moseys about, cracking jokes with cooks and vendors as he embezzles a meal’s worth of pirated samples. Having eaten, Ana combs through the hairline crowd in search of seating, while I follow at a leisurely pace, anxiously people-watching as I dissect the feel of the eyeball jitters, a pressurized optical nervousness that strains my focus because it has no modern outlet. Ana locates a nuclear family preparing for exodus and races ahead, slithering through thready gaps with her hands wedged together. “Are you sure you aren’t hungry?” she asks, having laid claim to the table. “Yes,” I say, uncapping the water bottle. “Babe, you should eat.” “Okay,” I say, distracted, eavesdropping on the approach of a mother-son discrepancy. The boy, six or seven, dressed as Spiderman, tells his mother he’s not going to the bathroom with her. As they , he grabs hold of Ana’s belt and tells his mother he’s staying with us. The mother apologizes, but we say it’s fine, so that the boy leers, roguishly pleased, that everything is all right because he gets his way; the same smile his mother misreads as love and affection. When she leaves, the boy regards us with hostile curiosity, as only children can. “See, it’s cute,” says Ana, pointing at him. “My name is Jack,” he says. “How old are you, Jack,” asks Bo’s girlfriend, sitting. “Seven,” he says, then points at me. “You’re twenty-one.” “Why’s that?” I ask, wondering if he can smell my breath. “So are you,” says Jack, pointing to Ana. “You have to be twenty-one to drink alcohol.” “Not really,” says Bo’s girlfriend. “I’m sixteen and I’m drinking.”

“You have to be twenty-one because my dad says so.” “Daddy is wrong,” says Bo, setting down a bucket of crab legs. “You’re wrong,” says Jack. “I’m afraid he’s right,” I say. “The law says we aren’t supposed to drink, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t capable. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but simply factual.” “My dad is right and you are wrong,” he says. As an afterthought, he declares: “My mom’s always wrong. She’s dumb because she’s a girl.” “You are going to hell,” says Ana. “Heaven’s in hell,” he says. “That’s why heaven has gates and hell doesn’t.” She scrutinizes the boy loathingly. “It’s not Halloween for two weeks.” “I know,” he says, pleased with himself. “Why are you wearing a costume?” she asks. “I peed my pants,” he says, gleefully treasonous. “On the way over here?” I ask. “Intentionally?” Jack nods with impish charm. “Your mom just bought your costume, so it was in the car, and you wanted to wear it?” I ask. “Yes,” he says, delightedly. “I peed my pants!” “You are the reason I do not want kids,” says Ana. “Your mother hates you.” “Girls have to pee their pants,” says Jack, sticking out his tongue at her. “They do not,” she says, incredulous, scathing. “Yes they do,” he says. Jack knows for certain.

“Well, actually,” I say, addressing Ana: “You pee your pants when you’re blackout drunk.” “Because I’m the pee monster!” she says in her baby voice. “Watch out, I’ll pee on you!” Jack slaps at Ana’s groin and says: “Show me your penis.” “Hands off you little heathen,” she says. “You don’t have a penis because you have a crack,” he says. “Girls pee out of butts.” “Wait, what?” I ask, laughing. “Girls have a butt,” he says, grabbing at his crotch. “In the front and the back?” I ask. “One big butt,” he says, using his hands to show how big a girl’s butt is. “How do you know?” I ask. “My babysitter pees. Her penis is a crack.” “I guess that’s kosher,” I say. “So you saw it?” “Yes,” he says. “The butt crack!” “It’s vagina,” says Ana, matter-of-factly. “Stop fondling your little . . . thingy.” “I’m not,” says Jack, with his hand down his pants. “Yes you are.” “No! I! Am! Not!” “Don’t tell me you have alien hand syndrome,” says Bami, catching himself, half-speaking in Bo’s French accent. “Do not,” says Jack; but thinking it over, lights up and says: “My mom does!”

“Do you know what alien hand syndrome is?” I ask. “No,” he says, defiant. “Matthew from the Bible probably had it,” I say. “Have you heard the phrase: Don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing?” “No.” “Okay, well, this is a stretch, but alien hand syndrome is the Tourette’s of body language.” “That one went over his head,” says Ana. “Did not!” says Jack. Spazzing his chin in an upwards series of tics, he slaps Ana in the crotch and cries: “Penis!” “I do not have a penis!” “Let me see!” he says. “Tiny child, shoo,” says Bo. “The Boogie Man is coming for you.” “You’re lying,” says Jack. “I ate the Boogie Man.” “The Boogie Man isn’t so bad,” I say. “Why’d you eat him?” “Because I want to be the Boogie Man.” “That is so creepy,” says Ana. “I can hear your soul,” says Jack, looking to her, offhandedly informative. “Who is this foundling?” asks Bo. “What does he want from us? Food, money— milky nipple?” Jack points at Bo’s girlfriend. “My dad says black people are stupid.” “She is smarter than your stupid white father,” says Bo. “My dad is smarter than everybody. Even kikes and slanty gooks.”

“You are stupider than your stupid white father.” “Leave him alone,” says Bo’s girlfriend. “You’re stupid because you’re black,” says Jack, pointing at her. “You are stupid because you are stupid,” says Bo, laying on the French. “My dad cleans guns,” says Jack, his hand on the table, fingering a plastic knife. “My dad says niggers will die.” “Stab your redneck white father with your plastic knife you stupid, inbred imbecile!” “He’s actually pretty smart,” I say, wondering why Spiderman has a knife. “Certainly precocious. Despite his prejudicial father, he might yet turn out agreeable.” Bo leans forward, facing off with Jack. “You hate girls like you hate black people, no? Tell me it is not true. You hate girls like you hate black people.” “No,” says Jack. “My dad says he likes girls because they do what he says.” “Your dad likes men,” says Ana. Jack looks at her like that’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Do you think for yourself?” she asks. “Yes,” says Jack. “You lie,” says Bo hatefully. “You are too stupid to think for yourself.” Jack stares. His eyes are intelligent and probing; they miss nothing. But his complexion lends him a sickly look, fair blond hair falling like chalk against his white-waxy forehead. The coloration of yellowish, soured milk, his skin reflects a fatty glow, like that of a wet oil painting, dark baggy circles outlining the sinister sweetness in his gaze. He curls his smirk slight and nastily, postured tall, his back straight as if unaware of himself, or otherwise confident at the age of seven. He regards us with disdain, distrusting us like feral children suspicious of

adults. “Chaos will get you,” he says, pointing at Bo. “Can I meet Chaos?” I ask, excitedly. “Where is he?” “He’s coming,” Jack whispers, confiding in me. “He always comes.” Bo’s girlfriend stands up and takes Jack’s hand, taking him for ice cream. “He is obsessed with his penis,” says Ana, laughing. “The day I realized I wouldn’t grow my own I was so upset. I was five years old and I it perfectly.” “You do?” I ask. “That’s weirdly Freudian.” “Yeah, I wanted a penis so bad! My brother said his grew before mine because he was older. No, stop it, it’s not funny! He promised me mine would grow! Obviously it didn’t.” “Do not disturb yourself,” says Bo. “Naturally girls wish to be boys.” Ana stares him down, as if to blow a secret to his girlfriend. “What is it about childhood?” I ask, lost in it. “I don’t .” “Yes you do,” says Ana. “Don’t you have memories?” “Yea, but—.” “Then you !” “Yes, but I don’t who it was that processed those memories.” When the mother returns, Bo says: “Jack is departed. His stupid white father took him.” She gasps, saying his father’s away on business, frantic and searching us; she spits out something crude that confirms Tourette’s, then demands to know who has her child. Bo’s girlfriend arrives with Jack, and the mother grabs her son, staring daggers at Bo, who smiles at her contemptuously, ingratiating—

shrugging his shoulders. “My mistake,” he says, cracking open a crab leg, sucking on the meat. “Your son is a monster,” says Ana, hands folded in front of her. “He doesn’t love you.” “An intelligent monster,” I say, winking at the mother. “Jack got the best of them.” She takes his hand and sweeps him away, thinking she must have left her angel to the spawns of Satan. Over his shoulder, Jack calls: “Chaos is coming,” biting at his ice cream. “Perhaps I misbehaved with the devilkin,” says Bo to the table. “You’re the devil,” says Bo’s girlfriend, standing up and storming off. After a pause, Bami bursts into laughter, punctuated by the surprise of an ice cream cone catching him in the eye. “Fuck-shit-penis!” he says, still laughing. “Chaos came.” He licks at the ice cream. “All over my face.” I follow my gaze down the length of the pavilion, to the stage, where people gather for a concert. Beyond the stage is the gated entrance to the carnivalgrounds. Each ride is the trace of colors and light, showing their names when they stop, embossed in old, veiny paints. And there’s the smell of carnies; odors and voices ferried through time—beckoning me to their booths, sycophantic and wicked; they excrete the sounds of flattery and pander, flashing their rotted teeth, waving hands over stuffed unicorns and teddy bears with polyester fur. Their fingernails are uncut, yellow and dirtied, cuticles soiled with grime. A shudder freezes me, and I swig openly from the whisky water bottle. “What’s wrong?” asks Ana. “I’m nauseated.” “Give me that,” she says, taking the whisky. “Come home with me. I’ll feed you.” “Yes,” I say, and we leave this place to buried memories—like repression

bubbles, and subversive things that don’t go pop.

. . .

Ana empties her backpack on the floor. Raw materials clatter and roll around the Room for Improvement, so that we make like tailors and clothe our new skins. Ana collects her supplies and moves into the bedroom, saying we can’t see each other until we’re costumed. I spray-paint a pair of women’s tights green and craft the shirttail of a long St. Patrick’s Day tee into wedges, turned inside out, made into a tunic that bottoms out with a serrated loin cloth. A brown rope measures the waistline and the feet are worn by moccasins. I sit at the fountain, tapping toes, waiting for a fairy figure to exit the Garden. She does, and her lace wings bounce in the still of her after-movement; light angles out the doorway, sharply yellow, cutting out the sparkles of her dress— brightly green, short and billowy around her thighs. Brunette and olive-seared, she forges the path of least resistance, sashaying her slender hips, so that with each footstep she straddles the line, high heels rat-a-tatting firmly on the pavement. I smile, headshaking as I look her over. “You levitate me like pixie dust.” “You say the sweetest things,” she says, mincing. “Shall we?” “One second,” I say, playing on a whim. “Tink, will you marry me?” “Peter—yes!” she says, kissing me lightly. “I am now officially Mrs. Tinker Bell Pan.” Turning surly, she frowns. “You only took forever to ask.” “True,” I say, “but it’s not like we don’t have forevermore.” Tea lights welt the pathway to the Roost. They flicker in brown paper bags and illuminate the villainous designs of pumpkins. The outdoor lights are off and I count smokers by the cherries of their cigarettes. A girl strikes a non-disposable

lighter, but it’s windy, and the spark from the thumbwheel flashscapes the scene. Her neighbors strike lighters, too, until one catches, bulwarked by two pairs of hands. Momentarily their palms entomb the glow of a jack-o-lantern, but the flame dies, and there blooms another cherry in the orchard. As we walk up, a startle rustles the bushes and a blonde male falls out, blue running shorts cuffing his tube socks. “Let me smell it!” says a girl, pouncing from the bushes. She death grips his penis and sniffs it. “You had sex today.” “I haven’t,” says the blonde, earnestly, in a strangely British accent. “Honest!” “I smell vagina.” “Oh, don’t be naughty!” We into the innards, the atmosphere kindled by an array of miniature fires, so that through their masks, people’s eyes darkly burn to the smolder of coal beds. Lanterns decorate high places, their tiny glass doorways all open, while candles center the mantelpieces of old-wooden picture frames; paintings that tell dark histories—rendered alive by candlelight, the flickers of which shadow the reanimation of their forms. At the bar, a pretentious young aristocrat looks Ana up and down; he whistles at her, too delayed to be suave, but dressed in the high-class garb of his daily wear. Ana laughs and looks him up and down in turn, judging him according to how she openly perceives him, as her opinion reinforces or shatters the ideas people have for themselves. She stares until he becomes like mercury sensitive to selfawareness, a dread that creeps heavily up his spine and caps off his skull; she stares until he splinches from sorting through his faces, each as mixed up as the mind behind it. This boy is origami, I think; a piece of paper—folding and unfolding into his family tree, his diploma, his trust fund statement. And when he follows her gaze into himself, all the way through, I laugh ruinously, that in some parallel reality he spontaneously combusts. Removing myself from social context, I wallflower, massaging the perimeter, dumbly amused as I observe the watery flux of shades in motion. Johnny,

dressed in his motley foolswear, heckles the King, attending him with witticisms. The King implies through gesticulation and invective that he does not require the services of a court jester, so Johnny takes me by the arm and diversions himself by spinning us around, blissed out and singsong; he jigs into the sway of things and I talk myself out, reclining on a couch beneath the Womb. I slap a stray wine bag and twist the spigot—but there sounds a “Boo!” “I scare you like Casper,” says Bo; five girls laugh.²⁴ Looking them over, I stand up, as if outside the body, and strobe through scenes like paparazzi: cameras ubiquitous, everywhere captured by the moment. People move in fleshy robotics. Socially programmed. Posed in the still life of crazy: arresting their postures, adopting roles, pausing faces. They are nativities of freeze-frame hilarity. Visual documentations of camaraderie—pictures, and mass movements of social paralysis. Everyone has photographic memories.²⁵ As I wend my way through the dance floor, a girl twirls around, fair-skinned with long auburn hair; tall, yet elegantly poised. I smile to smile but she moves her hips into mine and we dance. Liquor sloshes and we’re moving together, knees pneumatic, ebbing to her flow. We blur into the fast-forwarding panorama of cities at night, checkered skyscrapers, the headlights of cars speeding down roads streaked with red and yellow; then we’re kissing, and I’m a sudden rising panic; heart pounding, loss of breath, psychosomatically asthmatic. Stop-motion dancers stir me into the margins, where I loiter deadly, seeing only the ending of things. Bo Jean seizes me and diagnoses my inanity; that I’m the tallest oaf on the dance floor. I say fuck-all, I’ll tell her in the morning, but Bo slaps me like I’m sleeping: front hand, backhand—as if I’m blind to what he sees plainly. “Dear Mr. Fuckface,” says Ana, blackout, collapsing into me. “Where have you been? You come here right now.” I carry her to a couch. “Don’t bother apologizing,” she says, momentarily revived. “It’s not accepted.” “Put her on the floor,” says Laney. “She’ll pee.” But Bami over-arms an air mattress into the squared-off couch area, and I tuck her in, ing the fawning fauna of Bami’s harem—zoological in nature. I name for them their look-alikes, reminiscent of the animals they should own:

“Monkey. Fish. Donkey. Lioness.” “You’re all incredibly attractive,” I say. “But attractive monkey, fish, donkey, lioness.”

. . .

“What do you see,” he says; I rub out the sleep with bed-warmed fists. “Mac?” I ask, adjusting the tights where they ride up the crotch. “What do you see,” he says. “A plane. Now I’m buying an airline ticket, but I don’t know where.” “You know,” he says. “Yea, I’m going to Tybee,” I say, seeing myself on the beach in a cold wind, the cheeks redly flushed, apposed against a grey sky. I feel how slowly the fingers move the sand. “Where am I?” I ask, disoriented. “The Garden? How did we get here?” “Yep,” says Mac—as if I know. He stares into me with a bare, contemptuous gaze, the way a wild animal looks at a man before turning away. “Why did I sleep here?” I ask, looking around the den. “Why not with—” Ana. I wake up with the sound of her name. “A dream,” I say out loud, sitting up. Ana glances over her shoulder when I creep into bed; she hiccups a half-asleep greeting, high-pitched, shallow, pleased. She sleeps on, and I write in the journal.J6 At some point she wakes and reaches behind her to feel for me, jumping up and pulling a sheet overhead.

“Hi Baboo,” she says, childlike, and softly she giggles, choppy—like hm-hmhm-hm-hm. “Baboo?” I ask, impersonating Yogi. “Who’s Baboo?” “You.” “Because I’m a bear?” I ask. “Mm-hmm.” she says. “Like Baloo—my very own honeybear.” She throws off the blankets, naked but for the crumpled wings strapped to her shoulders, and back-flops into the pillows, a patina of glitter sparkling greenly on her breasts. We stare, and I think: But I’m not looking her in the eyes. I’m looking in one eye, and she in one; I move my gaze to the other and then to the brow, thinking how bizarre, how impossible, how frustrating, that you can’t look someone in the eyes—which I close, feeling her with the hands of a blind man mapping the density of her features. “If I go blind, I want to know what you look like,” I say; inexplicably needing to see her fully, more than two sides of symmetry; brow, nose, ears; and the cropped sedge of bangs. She curls her fingers and grazes me on the cheek with the back of her nails, looking into me as if reliving a memory. “I could waste away with you forever,” she says. Nodding, I allow her words to resonate; then glide to the window in a swift, motive stroke, yanking the cord. The white, wooden slats clatter and clang as the blinds open to the side-profile of woman moving into the umbrage of a tree; the shadow-leaves darkly freckle her, their outlines winding with sunlight all playful on her skin. It’s blue out and I palm the gilded windowpane, absorbing its warmth, riveted by the red creases between fingers. Vision lazes into unfocus, and my peripherals detect the imperfections of transparency: how a shard of sunray highlights a galaxy of dust. Dust, I think: Like the debris of supernovas. The empty clutter of space. Ana robes me with the nightwear of children who wander the house afterhours, with blankets worn like capes, clasped at their breastbones—nothing so certain as a handheld brooch.

“Tybee?” she asks. “Tybee,” I say, hours later, bedspread rolled up under the arm. “Everybody had the same bright idea,” she says, surly, protruding her jawbone. “Nobody but me should have bright ideas.” Bami hails us from afar, hand in hand with Laney, who veers off for the restroom. “Don’t poop,” calls Bami, loudly. “You’ll ruin everything.” As he approaches, he balls up tidbits from a slice of bread. “Watch me drown a seagull,” he says, crouching. “I call it: Saving Birds from Flying.” Bami sprints—silent, swift—into the shallows and underhands a tidbit to a gull, diving, so that as it swoops he plucks it midair, falling into a wave. He emerges like a shark to a seabird, the gull’s head in his mouth, its wings violently beating. “Why is that kid so ridiculous?” asks Ana. “It’s absurd,” I say, as he cups the seagull in his hands, mouthfeeding it a piece of bread. “Clearly he defies the laws of physics.” Walking the shallows, dripping sex, men and women turn their heads, following Bami up the shore; gliding through them, he’s a testament to the rhythmic nature of large bodies in motion, as fluid and graceful as the tribal dance of planets around the sun. “GIF me,” he says, looming by. “I’m the newfangled awesome.” “That arrogant—ah!” says Ana, beholding her hands. “I want to—strangle him.” “Hey!” I say, laughing as I cuddle-bomb her. “I have a bright idea.” “Baboo! I’m the only one with bright ideas!” Her voice falls. “You don’t listen to me.” “Look,” I say, throwing up the comforter and lying down beneath it. “Now we’re

all alone.” Ana humphs. “No more bright ideas for you. You are hiding the sun.” “Only momentarily,” I say, pumping the bedspread up and down to generate airflow. “Do you think people are wondering what we are doing under here? That they say to themselves: ‘How delightfully irregular. I’m not sure what to think, but I’m glad it’s happening.’” “Umm, I think no,” she says, chuckling. “I’m pretty sure they pegged for a couple of weirdoes.” “Why?” I ask. “I love it when I don’t know what to think. You can think anything.” “Nobody thinks like you,” she says. “M-mm, nope.”² “Do you want to fuck with people?” I ask, sprung by a whimsical notion. “Like this?” she asks, sitting up and sucking in on the fabric so people can see the cast of her face, inhaling her mouth like a sand mummy. She makes spooky nasal noises until someone slaps her. “What the,” she says, popping her head out. “Little fucker. Shoo!” “It’s a scary little baby,” she whispers, ducking inside. The scary little baby is a potbellied four-year-old. He is deadly serious, attempting to discern a basic truth. “Not monsters,” he says, defiant. “I sleep in your bed,” says Ana, ominous, like a haunting. “I eat in your sheets.” When the boy slaps her again Ana pounces, swallowing him in the comforter, hugging him tightly before she lets go; he scurries up the waterfront screaming for his mother. “Let’s really fuck with them,” I say. “Like how?” she asks. “Rove around the waterfront under here.”

“Like Chinese dragons on New Year’s Day?!” “Yes,” I say. “Drop your tros.” “Dropping trou,” says Ana, slipping off her bikini. “Like this,” I say, arranging our suits to the wear of invisible sunbathers. “That is not a good idea,” she says. “Yea, I don’t expect they’ll be here when we return, but it enhances intrigue value.” “You are so dangerous it’s hot,” she says, sexy-facing. “I don’t know how to respond when you say things like that.” “You don’t have to! Why do you not get that? You are so fixated on having the last word.” No I’m not, I think to say; but hang the mouth open; agape and grinning. Blanketed, we locomote to Back River. Older children flock as we navigate. They are curious, daring and brave. Ana spooks them with the swooping jeepers of poltergeists, and they dash about, chattering with tentative laughter; aware of our human identities, they flirt with their imaginations, and indulge in fairy tale, suspending their disbelief of monsters. “You’re real people,” says a girl, a realist at the age of nine, ruining it for her peers. “No we’re not,” I say. “Yeah huh,” she says. “I wish these things would happen in real life,” I whisper. “I mean to me, so I could watch people go for a walk on the beach beneath the privacy of a bedspread.” “That would be so funny!” says Ana, as a boy rams us like a mountain goat, the kids laughing with flight in their voices. He batters us again and Ana grabs him,

letting go to the diaspora of minikin, their trails crisscrossing with raucous guffaw. They regather and shadow us, teasing their ideas of terror, precognitive, but their parents beckon, and we cross into the back lot, a sylvan stretch of asphalt. “Oopsie,” she says, in the woods. “I think it’s that time.” “I don’t care,” I say, speaking and laughing both and at once; something of a curious, under-the-breath chuckle, with words involved.²⁷ And she sighs, catching her breath in the come-down. Lazy pleasure whims her exhaustion. I draw fingers down her sides, the comforter pulled over her butt cheeks, revealing a slivered moon of olive-white skin. “Have you seen a solar eclipse?” I ask. “I was in London, years ago, standing on a crowded sidewalk. A little kid said: ‘Mummy, the moon is as big as the sun.’ I laughing and thinking: Yes, in this light, the moon is as big as the sun.” “Really?” she asks. “I’m surprised you didn’t blast him with your knowledge.” “There was no knowledge,” I say. “I was temporally mythopoetised.” “Kiss me,” she says. Kiss, I think; but voices encroach, and Ana yells: “Busybodies!” She streaks through the boscage, while I hold the blanket overhead, chasing her. The forest tapers off and we sneak onto the beach, undercover. A man makes a rude comment, to which Ana responds by hymning the haunted house song. By the pier, our swimsuits are warm and crinkle-burnt, their insides coated with sand. Smelling earthy and ferric beneath the comforter, we scuttle like smugglers with a rowboat overhead, dropping here and there like a capsized flotation device. Crouching on wet sand, I scoop up Ana and take off, running blindly as she protests with armed resistance. I high-step through the shallows and the blanket drags across the surface, waterlogging, until the depths take us, floundering in a linen bowl of seawater. I feel like a school of netted fish. Ana finds her feet but I show like a sea lion, watchful, the pier railed with sightseers. They stare, point,

laugh as Ana balls up the comforter, searching for, spotting me. “Don’t do that,” she says, and as if I’m an arcade gopher, she skull-bops me with her hammer. But I gesture toward the gawkers, so that sinking, and wading, we emerge like Siamese swamp things.

. . .

The sun falls off the earth—it seems flat, the globe’s curvature to a distance. Minutes wind up the hour and the west yields pink and yellow. “I have to tell you something,” I say. “I know,” she says. Our legs dangle off the roof, heels tapping the shingled woodwork of Johnny’s beach house. Cars back out of parking spaces and drive away, taillights—the beady eyeballs. Ana shivers and hugs her shins. A chill comes with sundown, but she radiates heat. Her skin tone is the reddish hue of a burn dissolving into sunsoaked bronze. “You know?” I ask. “I know you have something to tell me,” she says, sad, watching. “What is it?” “I kissed a girl,” I say. “Last night at the party. We were dancing.” I reach to take her hand, but Ana jumpstarts. She was somewhere else, I think, and she regards me madly, a hurt cruelty blazing about her pupils. “I was shit-faced,” I say, knowing she’s heard this before. The shockwaves of heartbreak ripple through her—her mouth opening, closing. “You stupid fucking dick! Obviously you have no brain.”

And she says: “My god, I thought—fuck you!” She stands, unsure what to do with her arms, legs. Her long, slender form trembles with aftershock. “Come and pick up your shit if you want it, but I will probably kill you.” “Stop it,” I say, blinking. “That’s untrue and you know it. I told you I’d tell you if something happened.” “I didn’t think you would do it!” “Oh, like you haven’t!” I say, laughing outrageously. “I heard how you talked about your ex when you thought I wasn’t listening.” “Wow, I’m sorry you can’t deal with your shit,” she says, sneering. “I don’t give a flying fuck about him, and I no longer want to talk to your bitch ass.” “Good, because I’m not some Vin Diesel character, and I’m definitely not the testosterone-junky meathead archetype you slaver over. If you don’t want the truth, then why don’t you go back to your ex so he can cheat on you and lie about it repeatedly?” Her face falls. “Ok, maybe I overreacted, but how could you say that? Do you have any idea what that was like? I promised myself I would never again be with a cheater, and that is why it sucks that you are.” A pause plays us; cuts of hair bundle about her cheeks, wet and glistened with streetlight. Compulsively, she smiles, a precocious sense of hopelessness, hating herself for the ability to love. “I didn’t think you would ever make me sad,” she says, rubbing puffed, rheumy eyelids. I never thought I could hurt you, I think. Your eyes . . . I thought you were untouchable. “Who was it?” she asks. “Some girl. I could point her out.” “Don’t,” she mutters. “I might kill her.” “I don’t think you’re perfect anymore,” says her other voice.

“And I really thought you were,” she says. “Why aren’t you perfect?” And her light heaving sobs quake against me, rocking the cradle that holds her, squeezing out her hurt. She pushes me away, but I squeeze tighter, and she exhales, sinking into me. “Ana,” I say, surprised at how her name tastes on the tongue, as if I’ve added an ingredient to her recipe. “I wanted to be perfect for you, but I was never perfect.” “No,” says Ana. “You still are. You are like no one I have ever met.” She looks up. “You make me want to be a better person. I don’t drink as much. I’m not depressed. I barely get incredibly mad when I’m with you. Which is weird because usually I’m a total psycho. I’m not a big mushy homo, it’s just the reason I got so upset isn’t because you kissed that slut, but because I didn’t think you were capable of that.” “Is it good that I told you?” I ask. “No!” she says. “Not at all, I wish you didn’t because it is so stupid. But now I can’t help but think about it. Fuck!” “Look at me,” I say, palming her cheek. “I don’t understand how I could make you want to be a better person, but somehow you’ve opened me up, and you let yourself in.” “I’m in there with you?” she asks, wry, mincing. “Can I take off my jacket?” “Only if you stay a while.” “I’m staying forever,” she says, the other voice, nodding down but looking up. “Take me to the beach. We can do gay things, like stargaze and fork.” The Milky Way is a shard of crystal in the black-glassy night. Ana sits, leaning against me where I stand beside her. The sand is cold about the feet, and I tap on a thigh, but she ties her fingers into mine, and tugs lightly—lighter than the breath that blows on a wind chime—pulling through my innards like an easily slipped knot, loosening me up to lay me down. “It’s so big,” she says, finding herself in the ocean.

“As big as emptiness,” I say, lost in it. “Like the space behind the eyelids.”

6481

It’s the brushstroke of dawn. Grey watercolor dries blue, and sunlight whitewashes the stars. Taking tea on her balcony, Mother watches too. “Good luck with that,” I tell her, and drive to school, parking in an empty lot. Bo Jean pulls up beside me, dragging on a cigarette. We sit on a bench outside the main office. “Smoke?” he asks, thumping the pack. “Drink?” I ask, procuring a plastic water bottle. “You butter my spinach,” says Bo. “You probably already know, but I told Ana the truth.” “Christophe, my Apollo, you designed a major indiscretion out of a minor infidelity. What purpose serves you truth? Men are polygamous creatures, but women are not wanting to hear it, you understand? Lies and love is what women want, lies and love. But you have knocked your picture off Ana’s wall. You see? You look like a million little pieces.” “Then that’s what the truth looks like?” I ask. “You had a great fall, Christophe, but you are not Humpty Dumpty. Ana cannot put you back together again.” He stamps out his cigarette. Once alone, I pretend to inhale mine, cigarlike, exhaling as I flick it to the ground. Sparks skid like steal dragged on blacktop, but chewing it over, I pick it up and smoke it to the butt, breathing deeply—fresh air and cigarette smoke.

6491

The Garden sprouts weeds, acquaintances of Bami. Ana waxes belligerent, and Brís snafus Hodge with the presentation of a pretty girl, a Grecian offering visegripped by her humerus. “Here, boy, kiss the girl,” says Brís. “Show me it doesn’t matter.” Hodge says something that translates to: “I simply do not understand. This is irrational behavior. What am I missing?” “Don’t lose yourself in those dreamy blues,” says Brís to the girl. “Kiss him.” He mutters apologetically: I simply do not understand. “Boy,” she rages, pulling him by the ear. “Do it.” Dumbfounded, he begs for reason as Brís, now kicking and punching, requires him to kiss the girl; but the girl escapes and Brís slumps to the hardwood floor, hair sopping up spilled beer, her mane dripping like a dirty mop as Hodge ferries her to a loveseat. He tends to her while she laughs strangely, somehow victorious —that winning is futile. “You’re hot,” she sighs, and plays limply dead.²⁸ Hodge vegetates rawly. To flambé his noodle, I pour highproof rum and light him a shot. But Ana jumps me from behind. “Did you forget about me?!” “How could I forget?” I ask. “Umm, I don’t know,” she says, sloughing off and shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe you forgot.” She touches me with her fingertips, subdued and thoughtful; like limbo, or saudadia.²

“What are you thinking?” I ask. “You,” she says, “I’m thinking about you.” “Right,” I say, deflecting. “What do you want for Christmas?” She bites her underlip. “If time is money, then I don’t want you to buy me gifts. Spend time on me. That’s all I want from you. I want your time.” I nod, and ask: “But aren’t you doubting us? Bami said—” “What?” she asks, sitting up, soberly alert. “He said what?” “That you’re wasting your time with me, that it’s not the same since I kissed that girl.” “Ok, I never said I am wasting my time, but yeah, it sparks like a million questions. Was that girl really the first? Or the last? You said you would tell me, but if there was no way for me to find out, would you really? It’s not that I don’t trust you, but I can’t help but wonder.” Thinking, she watches me climb pinkies and thumbs like the itsy-bitsy spider. “I don’t trust anyone,” she continues. “Ever. And I really trusted you for some odd reason. I put my guard down, which I never do. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you how I felt, but I hate dealing with stupid situations.” “Can you tell me what you’re thinking from now on?” I ask. She nods. “You’re still my favorite.” “I hope that doesn’t mean you have less favorites,” I say, chuckling. “Why do you do that?” she asks, exasperated. “Do what?” “Talk like I have other boys!” “I do?” And I ask: “Wait, what?”

“You always do it,” she says, wiping her cheeks. “You are making me think I do.” “Do you?” “No! See! That’s just it! You make me feel like I’m the huge whore you think I am.” Purse-lipped, I think it over—nodding. A voice says: This is what you get for thinking you were infallible. I never said that, I say—I never said I wasn’t human. So the voice laughs, and says: But you thought it.

6529

Bami leaves a message—I listen on the telephone. He chats for a minute, reminding me that it’s Christmas break and I should him in Atlanta. He’s spending the holidays with the Warlocks, and they’re having a lot of fun. He also mentions that Laney and Ana come around for parties. Ana’s on a bender, bellicose and tongue-lashing, contemptuous of intervention. Outdoors, I squint, blinded by the wintry sunlight; wandering, I nest in the rootwad of a windfelled tree, jotting down the protean generation of mental widgets.J7 Seconds, hours, days later and I’m sitting with Hodge in a coffee shop on Bull Street. We people-watch, blending in by drinking loose-leaf tea out of a transparent inf mug, followed by an organic coffee, black; and two homebrewed yaupon teas in the late afternoon. Men in beards and glasses sip on espressos where they elbow one-seater round tables, hunched over like elves goblinized by their keyboards. They drink from cups of various color and size; demitasses, tea tumblers; mugs with handles, without handles—when orange flashes from the . Hannah. I abort my watch and do busy things, but reality feels fake so I pretend at being oblivious to how she inroads slowly as if searching for a seat, to the corner, by a window, chancing upon the red couch with thready fabric. I say hello, and she moots in kind. Trapped and thusly whimsical, I ask: “Would you like to partake in an improvisational episode of experimental psychology? We’ll narrate existence.” “Okay, like last year,” she says. “We had a name for it—erm, you called it perspective extraction, but I believe we agreed on VENT for vocalized existential narration of thought.” “Yes, except this time we’ll speak loudly so people can read our minds.” “Oh, but you know I hate improv,” she says. “It’s not like acting, but you start. I can, erm, well why don’t you go first? It’ll feel like rehearsal.” “I am people-watching you people,” I begin. “The man in the grey suit has sweat

stains under his armpits that smell of pure sport deodorant. I suggest an antiperspirant for the man in the grey suit. Now he’s staring at me. He might be a telepath. The woman in the purple chair glances over, but as I say this, she pretends she doesn’t hear me.” Hannah laughs, stifling her outburst with both hands. “The woman is maybe twenty-four,” I continue. “Plump from recent childbirth. She’s ovulating. You can hear it in her voice, and how she laughs. Actually, I’m not sure how I know; I probably made it up. The aproned boy at the visuospatially undresses the woman, while the man with artsy chops mulls over scenarios of tactical seduction. The woman wonders why men aren’t being manly and doing aggressive, primal things, like approaching attractive women. They want to, but what holds them back? Perhaps radioactive portable technologies reduce sperm count. Perhaps our modern, impersonal world has caused men to lose their manhood.” “Why don’t you shut up,” says the man in the grey suit. “Arrest this man!” I say, pointing. “He talks in his sleep.” And I say: “The grey man stands and adjusts his jacket as he mentally composes himself. He deposits his teacup in the dish bin and exits the coffee shop.” Hannah clears her throat. “We narrate existence, he says. I like it, it’s healthy to aerate your thoughts, but what can I say? Nothing, not truly, I’m an actor. Can’t I write what I say before I say it? Not here, not like this. Can’t I read from a script? Heavens no, they tell me life is unscripted. One time I typed up all my daily dialogues but I hated to read them. Why does everyday conversation sound stupid in print? Small talk. Shudders. And talking when you don’t know what to say next? Why does nothing seem relevant?” “Okay, I’m doing this,” she continues. “I believe I’m smiling, the kiss-goodbye, daddy calls it. Then he’ll muss up my hair. Oh, listen. This song, the lyrics are so intrinsically right. But in all the wrong ways? In case he’s wondering, the song is ‘The Writer,’ but—no, I do, it’s Ellie Goulding. Worms, what have I been saying? Am I saying what’s on my mind? I have deeper thoughts, I’m positive, but I don’t know what they are. They only prompt me when I’m alone. Deeper thoughts. I believe they’re better classified as feelings. Nameless ones with edible roots. Why, I love this, being is so provokingly inexpressible! It’s dashing.

I wish I could say more.” “She seems perpetually confused,” I say, looking closely. “Her presentation is that of the hypothetical, so that boys who soar like the birds breathe easy in her company, while men, who strike like sharks out of water, suffocate in the airiness of her abstraction. She peeks her round-blue eyes through a pair of squarish, thick-rimmed spectacles—looking out wide-open and big, made rounder by the corrected lenses. Her baby blues ask all the questions one can ask about nothing, while secretly answering everything, thus generally smiling; meek yet standoffish. She’ll con the advances of a suitor with friendly evasive dialogue, or will shy off his attempt with the implied rebuttal of sign language, retreating into her body, comfortably ensconced within her own narrative.” “Her color is bittersweet,” I continue. “Orange; not her skin or the clothes she wears, but her chroma, which pairs well with Bami’s silver-blue. Her name is Hannah, and she wears the emotions I don’t express. If you don’t misconstrue me, there is connection between us, an ideal appreciation, the type of thing that no one ever talks about.” “He has a girlfriend,” says Hannah. “The song changed,” I say. “I wonder if she’s listening. It’s Radiohead, ‘There, There.’” And I say: “My girlfriend has a name.” “Oh don’t say it!” she says. “I can’t say why, but it kills me to hear it.” Getting heavy, says a voice; so I laugh and silly-face bomb her. “He’s a man,” says Hannah, sadly smiling. “He is a beautiful man with blue yonder eyes. Skies and wilderness. Azure, that’s the word. He doesn’t let you see them, though, his eyes, so narrow. Sometimes they’ll show black, like coal, but hardened, like diamonds, and you feel him scrutinize you because they cut you all over, like scythes—oh, yes, he harvests you, lovely, the way they laugh when they plow your soul. It chills me. The yellowlight shivers. Yes, it’s pleasant, isn’t it? His Mona Lisa smile. It feels like the same smile I wear alone watching home videos, or loving what can’t belong to me. Couldn’t he smile more? Bigger, with his mouth I mean? He has the biggest smile when he does. Like a yawning lion. It blossoms inside you.

“And worms, he’s tall. Surely as tall as Bami. The tallest beanstalks I know. He teases me, and it’s cruel of him. He knows I fancy him handsome. He knows I fancy him exceedingly more than handsome. His girlfriend is beautiful. I don’t like her. She isn’t evil, I wouldn’t—no, but powerful, that’s the word. She scares me. I don’t like how I feel about her. “Shit, shouldn’t I go? I’m saying things out loud. Yes, I’m standing. Walk away, Hannah. No, no, I couldn’t. He’s observing me. What will I do, he wonders. Christopher wonders. My legs simply don’t obey. They don’t listen to me and oh fuck it, I’m sitting like a stupid girl. “Can’t he tell me what he thinks of me? He finds me terribly silly, I’m so exceedingly sure, but these aren’t my thoughts! These words are drowned carcasses floating into my head so bloated and I say their names because they’re dead. Oh, he talks with silence. What is he saying? His eyes contain worlds but I know they aren’t for me. Fuck, fuck, Hannah, why can’t you shut up?! I need to go. I’m going. I’m certainly going. God-fuck-me, why am I still talking?!” Hannah stands, steps forward, spins around and sits down again, hands to her thighs and knees creased together. Matter-of-fact, visualizing her composure, she says: “Talking makes me speechless. Can’t you understand? I’m not what I’m saying.” Smiling inside, I lean in close. “Look through my windows—peeping tom into my soul.” And I say: “We’re the original three-body problem. I’m the earth orbiting a girl, my sun, who illuminates and blinds me. As the earth, I am also my own world, and that of Hannah’s, who is the moon, and who shines for me—looking on from afar, in phases. “It’s curious she mentioned that power in my girlfriend; but she misunderstands it, so I have to say her name, to explain how Ana is at war with herself; that both and at once she is the moxiest of women and the most tenderhearted of children.” “I mean well,” I continue, “but people interpret according to who they are and how they think. You are what you know, and who you know, but moreover, you are what you think. Hannah, like me, is a fisher from the sea of words, both trollers, but she casts her dragnet on the opposite shore, and there is an ocean

between us. Her sunset is my sunrise. My dusk is her dawn. “And so we chitchat in third person; Hannah will object, but in my opinion, it is entirely natural to acknowledge the connection between us, not that we are anything that needs to be complicated with titles or explorations, as our intangible appreciation does not require physical consummation. In this way, humans are ravaged by the immaterial. We capture relationships neither concisely in our words nor precisely with our bodies because we are creatures of intelligent implication. Yet, it seems to me that there is nothing greater than two minds freely shared, attempting at something more by dissecting the substance of mental matter. Because Christopher and Ana are mind-mates, she shares his body, but if a mind is the expression of an extradimensional entity, that of the soul, which fuses with and animates our carnal materials, then our souls share something of their source, and this is the nature of Christopher and Hannah.” “He’s playing a game with me and he thinks I don’t know,” she says. “Then don’t play. No is your personal right, a declaration of independence, your affirmation of you. If you can’t say no, then all your yeses are meaningless.” “No, that’s wrong to me. Yes is essential. Yes is instrumental. I say yes to everything.” I bite a thumb at the knuckle. “Then say yes to no.” “He so casually opens me up,” she says. “Can’t he see what he does to me?” “He is emotionally stupid,” I say. After a silence, I ask: “I wonder what she’s thinking.” “It’s terrible to be asked that,” says Hannah. “I’m not sure what, I only know how my thoughts made me feel. No. You can’t expect me to explain!” She stands and walks deliberately into the sunlight. I’m unsure what I’ve accomplished, what I’ve learned, suddenly aware that the onlookers train their eyeballs on me. “So the observed observe the observer.” I say. “It’s like your eyes are watching God.”

And channeling Bami, I ask: “Or am I the devil? Because your faces look like hell.”

. . .

“You tell me to call more often, and now that I do, you’re vague and avoidant.” “I’m with Laney,” she says. “Are you drunk?” I ask. “See you later, sweetums.” “I’m coming over.” “No,” she says, half-coherently. “No, later.” “Too late,” I say, “I’m halfway there.” She descends the stairs in a dress shirt, her legs long, naked and olive-toned. The shirt swallows her, buttoned-down blue, and the sleeves droop past her hands. When she opens the door, the wind catches the shirt like a knee tulle dress, exposing her black lace panties. Her breasts are bare, and she is the sensation of red; mascara-clumped lashes crumble about her cheekbones, her hair knotty and falling into the shirt collar. Ana minces her lips, and I almost smile, suppressing my natural response to seeing her. She is the look of Saturday mornings on a white fitted sheet, covers thrown back, reposed and made-up like the beauty spot of after-sexy; of morning glory and unkempt grace; how, wombing in bed, browned memories come alive with alcohol on our breaths—the sunshine falling through tall windows, angular, highlighting our stains on the blue downy pillows. She flutters as I take her description, saying: “Eek!” as she flights up the stairs.

Laney sprawls in Ana’s bed, covering her midsection with a body pillow; also wearing black underwear, but topless, her breasts these weighty cushions that schlep to either side. “Cover yourself, whore,” says Ana, looking out from the bathroom. “How long have you been dunk?” I ask, counting the empty handles. “New Year’s Eve,” says Laney, too-casual. “Today is?” “January third.” Sighing, she investigates Ana’s wardrobe, exaggerating the sway of her hips, sorting through shirts and hangers. I sit on the bed, nestled in an alcove to the side of the room. Chin to shoulder, Laney says: “Sweet baby, don’t sulk.” She turns to me weighing the option of two halter tops, each covering a breast. She scales the hangers up and down. “Red or black?” “Black,” I say. She turns and wheedles the red top off the hanger, letting it fall to the carpet. She bends down, fully at the waist, ass in the air, cheeks spread, and picks it up. “Nice booty-trap,” I say, laughing, escaping into the bathroom with Ana. Granular, sooty foam haloes the upper portion of the sink. “Did you go out last night?” “No,” says Ana. “What have you been doing for three days?” I ask, amused, trying to sound incredulous. “Oh, you know,” she says, “whatever.” “You didn’t want to see me?” “No,” she says, tearing up, moving to her bed, “I did. Baboo . . . I did.” Laney is gone, and Ana fishes out a fifth of vodka. “You’ve been drunk since New Year’s?” I ask.

The answer lies in her inward stare, and the bottleneck slips through her fingers, liquids splashing inside, to the thud of thick glass against drywall. “Are you wearing Bami’s shirt?” I ask. “Bami’s? No, but it was in your closest.” “Oh, right, I borrowed that.” “Fork me,” she says, overheading the shirt, scooting into me. “I missed this the most.” Later, Ana wakes me from the bathroom; hacking, coughing, splashing—the acoustics of vomit in a toilet bowl. She straddles the toilet, forearming the rim, draping her wrists over the plunge. Tendrils of brunette fall into and graze on the puddle of bilious retch. “Hi,” she says weakly, downcast, hurling a cannonade of dry heaves. She gags on upchucking hiccups, and willfully objects, frustrated, venting, sounding out the annoyed utterance of a groan that mutates into an intolerant, self-disgusted wail. I drop to the floor behind her and slide the legs along hers, resting the arms languidly in her lap. I press the face into her scapula, and not knowing what else to say, mouth words into her spinal column. Her heart pounds in arrhythmic palpitations, fast then slow, and I brace her tightly when her abdomen contracts, sobbing out air and spittle, smiling to herself weakly because salivas cling from the precipice of her underlip; two cuts of frozen waterfall. She spits at them, but divulging their viscosity, they wink like the bounce of spider silk. She hangs her head low in the toilet water and heaves again, expelling fluids in sporadic volleys that smell of Technicolor acid. The hollow erupts with ballistic backflow so that airborne ejecta spatter her brow, eyelashes, bangs. I crop back her hair, and she spits. “So much for washing my face,” she says, chuckling, badly freckled. “You still make me smile,” I say, wiping a fleck of stomach acid from her cheekbone. Her happiness wells with sadness.

I dampen a washcloth with warm water, and she dabs her cheeks before smothering a deep breath with its fragrant and freshly laundered texture. “I can’t sleep,” she says, moving to her porthole window. There is a predawn glow. “Insomnia is a symptom of withdrawals,” I say. “You spooned me forever,” she says. “I breathed with you and I even handcuffed your wrists, but of course you rolled over.” “I like when you do that,” I say. “Especially when you two-hand my forearm.” “Mm-hmm, I’m practicing my pull-ups so I can get swoll and hog-tie you with snuggles.” She dashes to the bed and dives under the Swedish comforter, curling into a ball. “You can hold me now,” she says.³ She ferrets into me, but I use the knees to stonewall her advance and raise an emotional resistance, holding out against her intimate suggestion. “I’m not here for that,” I say. Her sockets develop eyesores; and her lips—fish-out-of-water . . . a verb almost mouthed. “Baboo,” she says. “Don’t do this.” But I do, and strange emotions wash over me, feeling blank, but coursing with electricity. “Why are you here?” she asks, like an act of attrition; sad, but accepting; matterof-fact, yet wistful. “A side of me insists that something’s wrong here,” I say. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s there. A second says it’s because I kissed that girl, and yet another testifies that no matter what happened, it’s negligible because I’m yours. And that side begs me to listen.”

“Will you?” she asks. “Won’t you listen?” “I didn’t want you to come,” she says. “I was afraid of this.” “It seems like this is what you wanted.” “When I wasn’t thinking clearly, but now you’re here. I how perfect you are.” “Right,” I say. “I know you hate that, but it’s true, and you don’t understand. You don’t believe me. It is like you don’t believe people like you. But we do! Baboo, we do.” Later, she says: “I don’t like feeling this, not for anyone. Not ever.” “Yea,” I say. “It’s ill-advised.” “Start over with me,” she says. “That way we can forget shitty-everything.” “If we don’t make it a cliché,” I say, as daylight breaks into the windows. “No reintroductions.” In the lull I nod off, but she rouses me and I spoon her. “What if I was a cuddle-rapist?” I ask, whimsically moved. “What if I was this guy who stalked people down dark alleys and spooned them until their struggle fell off and they went limp with apprehension. Then I’d skedaddle and the tabloids would dub me: The Cuddle Rapist.” “You are so creative,” she says, half-mockingly. “Did you sleep?” I ask. “No,” she says, singingly. “Close your eyes and imagine me smiling at you— see!” “What?” I ask, opening them. “Do it again. Imagine me smiling at you without smiling yourself . . . No! Don’t do that. You are not allowed to smile!” “I can’t. It’s reflexive.”

“It’s impossible,” she says. “Your smile makes me smile. I can’t stop.” And in her other voice, says: “You belong to me.” “I know,” I say, chattering the incisors. “I know.”

6551

Patting the living room couch, I frown, the fabric moistened with night sweat. The cushions expand like a wet, squeezed sponge as I move to the green-velvet ottoman. The cellularity emits an ectoplasmic aura above the dining room table, plugged in, its lifeline sleek and threadlike—not so forgetful as yarn, or as bristly as a deadweighted noose, and neither stiff nor slack, but well-conditioned to the coil, stow and kink of transit. The cellularity says: Ana. It reads: Did you tell Hannah about Whitey? If not I’m slitting Bami’s throat! “Huh,” I exhale; an unfamiliar tremble tugs at the knees, and lawlessness incarcerates the legs. But the head cools and amuses itself with the clinical observation of emotion; that here is the human error of misfire communication. Johnny, the text was meant for Johnny. Queerly amused, I wait for her to cover her tracks, and the cellularity repeats: Ana. It reads: Hey, this is Laney on Ana’s phone. Wrong text. Ana says Hi! Dampened skin flushes hotly, the heart pumping blood to smelt ore. “Recognize deception,” I say, speaking out loud. “But no, I don’t know anything for sure. Not right yet.” I sit out the night; three digitally unopened envelopes lie on the countertop. I drink coffee on the front steps, Mother on the balcony. Steam rises from a mug nestled in her palms. A sigh escapes me, and I recline backwards, up the steps, tossing aside the journal. “James,” says Hodge. “You burnt each other’s cookies.”

“That’s the thing,” I say. “We started over, but if I let it go, whatever she did with Whitey, then she’ll gather that lying is effective. She would think she fooled me. On the other hand, I could let the lie eat at her until she caves, but still she’d peg me as a fool, in that it is up to her to open my eyes and make me see; as if, in being lied to, the folly was mine.” Ana struts up the pavement and stands akimbo at the base of stairs. Her color has changed, nuanced, now a shivering red; I wonder if it is because I perceive her differently, coldly, as mine has become a snowflaked atheism, and she an iceberg rolling in the arctic. “You didn’t pick me up,” she says, dressed for school. “I forgot.” “You did not. You didn’t respond to my texts, either.” My gaze peppers wintry. “Did I need to?” Not looking away, a vacancy occupies her; the whites of her eyes redden around her murky hazels, and her corneas glaze over like windows thick with frost. “Did it happen over break?” I ask. She nods. “We kissed.” “Whitey.” “Yes,” she whispers. “You kissed? That’s it? You couldn’t tell me that?” “That’s it,” she says. “No it isn’t,” I say. “Nothing else happened,” she says, of a salted iciness. Tears fringe her eyelids. “You’re lying.” “No, I am not always a good person, but I am not lying to you.”

“Why would you send such a violent text over a simple kiss?” I ask. “I knew personally how much you kissing that whore hurt me, so I didn’t want to do that to you. It was a kiss. I would tell you if it was something to worry about. But it’s not!” “Right,” I say, half-laughing. “You’ve been kissing boys.” “I have not been kissing boys! But you’ll believe what you think no matter what I say.” “Yea, because you’re lying.” Her face falls like a sheet of ice from her iceberg. “How is that fair?” she asks, soft but biting. “Did I condemn you for kissing that slut?” “No, but that’s because I was telling the truth.” “What?! And I am not?! You could at least give me the benefit of the doubt. Like I believed you word for word that all you did was kiss that prostitute. Would you have told me if you weren’t afraid someone else would have first? I don’t know you haven’t been kissing girls but I do not make assumptions. And it sucks that you do.” “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I still want to be with you, I just don’t know if I believe you’re telling the truth. I think there’s more, but if there isn’t, there isn’t.” “You believe I cheated on you?” “I don’t,” I say, searching in vain for a glimpse of duping delight. “Actually— yes, I do.” “Why would you want to be with me if you thought that?” “Because you’re human.” “Bullshit, you think I am a whore,” she says. Her voice falls off. “I won’t be with you if you think I am someone I am not. I know what that is like and I would never do that to you! Believe me. You should believe me. Or else I am not

yours.” “Fine, I believe you.” “You are lying!” she says, emphatic, yet stilled by a self-respecting sense of reserve. “You are such a shitty liar.” “What I meant is that I believe that you want me to believe you.” “Ass! What does that mean?” “That I believe you.” “You are impossible!” she says, peeved. “You are making me crazy!” “Let’s nap,” I say. “We have school.” “I didn’t sleep,” I say, “Did you?” “No,” she says, sighing. “What do you want to do?” “Sleep,” she says, a whisper. She ascends the steps slowly, lackadaisical and slouched, arms swinging at her sides. Her presence speaks of apologetic children reluctant to say sorry out loud. As she stares, her windows defrost and earthen whorls bloom about her pupils. A hand on each knee, she lowers herself beside me, half a foot away, scooting in increments until our hips touch. “Do it,” she says, daringly oomphing. “Close your eyes and—” “I’m already smiling,” I say. “Good,” she says. “Now kiss me.”

. . .

The Telfair Academy still stands as the first Southern public art museum. Footlights illuminate its façade, and palisades fence off five statues pedestalled in a hedge garden. “Damn,” I say. “I wanted to show you my favorite painting, but it’s closed.” Ana huddles closely, and we continue on our walk; modified hearses skulk around street corners, their roofs raised into canopies and seated with the busts of thanatourists, exploiting Savannah’s haunted locations. An eerified silence ferries us to the deeper waters of this morning, each wondering what the other believes as we snake through a network of squares. A jogger in a reflective vest laps the rectangular periphery of Forsyth Park, mile round, skirting its interior, which, afterhours, lurks with purblind walking paths, empty greens and dank vegetation. “It’s like an outdoor cathedral,” I say, approaching the park’s wooded entrance hall. We wait in the narthex, Ana slipping her hand in mine as she bores into the depths of the leafy archway: oak trees columnar and lofty, spaced with lanterns, which pave a dimly lit corridor. She tucks in her thumb, and the broom of live oak sweeps us in. The air is the breathy stealth of a cold, raw grotto, where swampish draperies hang like dripstone—Spanish moss, lopped branches—lending the vaulted arbor a cavernous mood. With craned necks, we flesh out our demons and decorate the canopies with them: rotted pirate beards suspended from tree limbs that branch out and crawl for us, sagging with lengthier mosses that sway like dead men from gallows. We allow hyperbole to romanticize the moment, so that she clings to me as I laugh out daringly, calling all monsters: ghouls and poltergeists, and the popular fictions; necrotic souls swaddled in placenta, followed by grotesque moonlighters, and the prowl of long-toothy beasts. The lamplight marginalizes our figments, but they shadow us like voices down a prison hall, into the black greenery.

“If you had roots, where would you strike them?” I ask. “Is there a place that keeps you?” Ana purses her lips. “If you mean real places, I would have to say Atlanta, but I think people should count as places, so you.” “And if I stuck my roots in you, would we be a mobile system of rootage?” “Mm-hmm,” she says. “You’re my baby bonsai tree.” The rain starts with a drizzle; then it pours and we dart for cover, usurping sanctuary from a playground. Ana skips ahead with the grace of a ballerina, like hopping between stones, and scales the climbing pole. Contemptuous of alternative points of entry, I run up the slide, into the pavilion, and tumble onto the honeycombed plastic. “Is everything okay?” she asks, nibble-lipped, sitting on me. “I want us to be perfect.” “Sure,” I say. “You are being vague.” I work fingers into the cavitied groundwork. “You once said that when you run you zone out and everyone disappears. Your whole reality is that race. But me, when I run, I get this electromagnetic high, and it’s my mind that races. It’s like these electrical bloodstreams vein through me, wirelessly powered, so that reality opens up to cognitive pyrotechnics, and I’m riddled by ideas. It’s a firing squad. In this way I’ve never known anything that could monopolize my attention, nothing organic that could wholly captivate me, until you . . . Ana— you have duende. What I mean is that novelties lose interest value when I familiarize myself with their odds and ends. I was afraid that would happen with you, but it didn’t, and it won’t because you’re at once familiar and unfamiliar. You are this nucleus of wonderment, and all about you is a world sold into the deficit of awe. “Because with you I am anatomically yours. With you, there is only you, and the one analogy I can think of is that you are to me as running is to you.” The best responses are vocally unexpressed. She blankfaces—chalk wiped from

blackboards, and while she searches for what to say, a sequence of people ripples through me, given to a fleeting succession of faces that react to each of hers. I inhale fiercely and laugh. “Let’s do it.” “Make babies?” she asks. “Do fuck,” I say, gripping her waist.³¹ But she shushes and muzzles me—clip-clop, clip-clop. “It’s a horse,” she whispers, as my laughter muffles through her fingers. “It’s just the police,” I garble. “That, or bedlamites psyched out the mounted patrol again.” “Take me to the Garden,” she says, cheeks flushed. On our way home, linen skies fold to the starry void, and Ana repossesses wishes from Forsyth’s Parisian fountain. They jingle and jangle where they bounce in her palm, like a debt collector tossing a drawstring coin sack. “Make a wish,” she says. But a meteoroid stabs the atmosphere, then a second, and seconds later several more. The meteors shower over us, under fire, caught up in the downpour of heavenly munitions. “Babe, make it now!” she says. “Are we wishing on pennies or shooting stars?” “Both,” she says, decidedly. She flicks her wrists and sows the fountain with wishes. The coins drown in slow motion—flipping, flailing, falling through water. Rotations multiply their surfaces, splaying light like a disco ball. In the Garden, she lounges on the bed. Her blue camisole warms the headboard’s cherry finish. I sit on the desk, feet in the chair, watching her from across the room.

“What is it?” she asks, moving to me. “What just changed?” “You’re frozen,” she says. “I’ll make you soup.” “No, I’m on fire,” I say, walking outdoors. Down Abercorn, we vault the fence into Colonial Park Cemetery. Ana holds her phone out, dragging fingertips over the polish of monolithic tombs, winding around above-ground burial vaults that resemble ed beds mattressed with sarcophagi, and through granite headstones that spread out like a flowerbed gathering of gnomes “Tell me what’s wrong,” she says. “Please.” She sits me down on a bench near a tall stone gazebo, and nibbles me at the shoulder. Her saliva gathers in the shirt. “There are these three words,” I say. “I don’t know what they mean, and it’s impossible that they conceptualize what they claim, but they persist and repeat themselves so that, for whatever reason, I think that somehow, in some way, I’ll mean it if and when I say them.” “No,” she says, momentarily taken aback. “Baboo, don’t. They are always wrong. But I want you to know that I do. You know, don’t you?” I nod—and she bites her bottom lip between kisses. It’s a nibble, thoughts held like her breath, staring, waiting for me to kiss her again. And in this space I say it. I say it as if I’m fed-up with bullshit. I say it like a purge, a cathartic fuck-you. I say it like a curse upon us, like premature ejaculation, like bastards born out of wedlock, their afterbirth a murder scene. I say it like lights on and off. I say it and I say it again. With crime, carnage, marrow on the lips; the cupidities of arrowheads through heartbeats. I say it how men kill the thing they love. I say it like I mean it: meanly—mean like boys picking on girls; mean like its antonym and mean like grown-ups who can’t get enough of each other. I say it mean with tug, war, push, pull. Mean like the unlimited violence of love. “I love you.”³²

I repeat: “I love you.” “You know I do,” she says, “You have to.” I hold her still so that she knows I know—that maybe she sees; so that in our gaze Ana begins, dissolves, fissions, given to the ebb and flow of hips. In-andout instinct, with sobs to the chest; incubated, impossibly harder. “Do you know?” she asks; a whisper, a breathy gasp. “Christopher, look at me,” she says. “No, now, look at me.” She’s working up to it, visualizing the words spilling out in the unforgettable. She fingernails the scalp, massaging, pulling; then her eyes roll back, and shoot forward. “Look at me,” she says, breathless. “I love you.” What rises, falls, and a patch of grass collects small rocks beside our bench. They seem far away, but I construct with them a small cairn. Ana rests, and I chin-nuzzle her ear, wondering after her thoughts; whether she’s sleeping, or if her eyes are open, wondering after mine.

. . .

I pull the comforter over Ana and sit at the bedroom desk, fiddling with the anglepoise lamp.³³ It regards me with a crouched and peeking curiosity, adopting the form of a ratty old man stooped in the sewers, arms drawn tightly in, hands chest-level, in the mimicry of rodents on hind legs—the tiny, cheese-noshing tyrannosauruses. I glower and shove the desk. Anglepoise squeaks of ungreased metal, headshaking into a downcast mope. “Anglepoise,” I say. “You know you brighten my day.” The lamp ignores me, so softly, yet forcibly, I slam the hand on the desk. “I am your father!” I declare, in the way drunkards chastise their children. “Jkfucking with you. I’m not. That would be bizarre.”

6553

Hodge accompanies me on the front steps, beneath the grey-blue dawn. “Can we talk in safe mode?” he asks. “My brain smells blue.” “Hodgepodge, you’re depressed,” I say. “It’s simply biochemical. It only affects your perspective if you let it.” And I ask: “Do you think Ana’s lying?” “I think you should believe her,” he says. “I do.” “Yea, but you’d believe the truth out of anyone.” Bami exits the backdoor, trailed by Johnny, and we them in the square. “Christophe, you are half Jew,” says Bo Jean. “What say you for Genesis?” “Nothing, other than God fucked us because we realized we were naked. What knowledge did we garner from eating that fruit? Nothing. It made us aware that we are aware, so it should have been called the Tree of Self-awareness, or the Tree of I’m Fucked in the Head Because I Know that I Exist. We realized we were naked and we learned to hide from God.” Bami scoffs. “Stupid me, I know nothing—shut up. You eat whole enchiladas.” “No I don’t. If our galaxy is an enchilada, then I’ve barely taken two nibbles, and you think that makes a bite. It’s stupid that you think we’re not stupid; you don’t see how laughable we are.” “Call me sheepshearer,” says Bami. “Because I am about to fleece you.” “Yea?” I ask daringly, half-laughing. “You think we know what we know? Then how about this: I know that you’re lying. And I know I’ll get the truth.” “Truth,” says Bo Jean, flippantly dismissing it. “Irrelevant.” “Do you mean irrelevant or relative?” I ask. “Because I’m asking you to tell me

the truth. You, as in Bami. Stop retreating to Bo. I want the truth from each of you, about what Ana did with Whitey in Atlanta, although I know you’re plotting together behind the scenes.” “It is true,” says Bo. “I am a Janus face, but me? Conspire against my brother? No, you mistake me.” “Fuck you, Bo Jean—Bami,” I say. “You’re as Janus as the nanoparticle.” “By Jove,” says Bo. “Please, Christophe, hear yourself—are you listening?” “Yes, I’m listening. You just said the truth is irrelevant, so why wouldn’t you lie? Is it lying if you don’t believe in truth in the first place? Or is that a maxim you came across one night, trying to sleep for all the shitty things you are?” “Such is life, to shit or to be shat on,” says Bo. “Merci, I sleep well. But Christophe, my brother, you are paranoid. Please, inform me, why should I lie to you?” “Because you know how to lie. Because your nonverbal communications suggest that you’re telling the truth. Because you could outwit any polygraph. Because you’re intelligent and because you can. The real question is: Why do you continue to lie? If you think it’s too late to be honest, it’s not. There won’t be any consequences. Only truth.” “That is funny because it is preposterous,” says Bo. “I share life lessons with you —maybe you listen, yes? If you require ideology, search for paradise in books, but if you identify paradise in a brochure, then you are a fool.” “Is this a game to you?” I ask. “If I’m playing along then I’m definitely not laughing.” “The secret to feeling good about me is not to feel bad for you,” says Bo. “I empathize, but Christophe, pity is like gravity. It graves you.” “Seriously, why are treating this like a joke?” “Because nobody is lying to you but you!” says Bami, emphatic. “Trust your intuition, but come on, you are imagining shit. We aren’t as fucked up as you want us to be.”

“Look, it’s been two weeks and—” “Enough,” says Bo Jean, spitting. “Why not listen to me? To Ana? Anyone but you. It is possible, no, that—” “Fuck the possibilities,” I say. “I don’t want them anymore.” And looking to Ana, I say: “What I want is a straightforward, objective answer.” She stands in the backdoor to the Garden, beneath the balcony, thinking into a cup of tea. Slowly she looks up, extracting her thoughts with the tea bag, gently squeezing. She smiles with unsmiling eyes, sad-happy, as if seeing some terrible thing behind her that she can’t give into, and can’t forget.

656 J

The Room for Improvement is a place for learning about people, the world, myself; for watching pedestrians cover a section of sidewalk; it is a room for reading and entering parallel dimensions; for creating universes; for sitting by the fire and burning maths, worldviews. It is an introvert’s vestibule to the extrovert’s reality, a portal to ersby and their random bits of dialogue. It serves as an insight to social gatherings in the square, or an ingress to fictional spheres of influence, to alternative persons interacting in alternative earths via quasispatial realities; it’s a place for pattern-binging, and teaching myself to write. Or simply thinking; not the wayward musings of the fantastical, but of circumscribed inquiry—scrutinizing in weights and measures, checks and balances; deciding that I must be decisive again, developing a narrowed-in perspective of friends in the present as they pertain to the future; who stays, who goes; that here, in this room, I contrive to adapt, transfigure, improve. “You forgot about me,” says Ana. “Didn’t you?” “Yes,” I say, maybe lying, staring out the window. “How are you?” “See for yourself,” she says. “Baboo, why won’t you look at me?” And she asks: “Who am I?” “You’re Ana.” “No, to you. I’m someone else in your head, and I want to know who I am.” “I couldn’t tell you in a hundred thousand words,” I say, as the Garden plays us a song. “They wouldn’t be enough.” “Maybe a few will do what a hundred thousand can’t? See how sweet I am! I’ll even help you: Do you think I am a loose cannon? Do you think I am too rational and insensitive? Do you think I am smart and fun and abstract?” “I don’t know,” I say. “All we can be is each other’s misconceptions because we are our own misconceptions. But no, I don’t think you’re a loose cannon. You

aren’t abstract in the way you mean it, but you are intuitive, rational, fun, and intelligent. There are a thousand and one types of intelligence, and I like you for the ones you possess. They are all the ones I’m lacking.” “Do you wish I was abstract?” she asks, moving closer. “What do you mean?” I ask, thinking of Hannah. “Like Hannah?” she asks. “No, no, whatever I’ve hinted at before, forget it. You’re incomparable. And you make me feel real. Like I exist. That I belong here.” “Do you know what I think of you?” she asks. “No.” “Do you want me to tell you?” “If you want to.” “Will it matter if I do?” “No, but don’t mis—” “You asshole!” So I ask: “What do you think of me?” “I think you are many things,” says Ana, couching her lips on the nape of the neck; dryly, not for kissing. “But mostly I think you are a philosopher, except a bad one. You think so much about why things are the way they are, and the things that could be, and why things are not every other which way, but you fail to notice what is happening right here in front of you. And whenever you try to fix something, you usually make it worse.” “Okay.” “Do you disagree?” “No.”

“Tell me why,” she says. “Will you?” “All I know is that I know ‘objective’ facts and subjective hunches, while understanding that everything I know could be wrong, or, at least, erroneously predicated. Despite this, I strive to think over and accumulate more of what I don’t know. That’s why I think you’re right.” “What do you do with knowledge?” “Nothing.” “Apply it to something. You’re a good writer.” “Sure.” “Then write,” she says, slightly frustrated. “What about your stories?” “If I write them down, they’re fixed. They’re changed by being unchangeable. But in my head, they change as I change, subject to open-ended modification.” “But no one else can read them! That’s just not fair.” “Why would—.” “Stop it,” she says. “I want to read them. I want to be inside your head. I don’t like you being in there all alone. It makes me jealous. I want to be in there with you.” “You are.” “No I’m not.” “To me you are.” “Not to me! Babe, I want to brain you! I don’t feel like I am anything to you! You disappear for days on end. You do not call. You prefer books to my company and then . . . Ah! You prefer to talk to fictional characters over real people. Me included! That’s not fair! And I’m not being unreasonable. Why can’t you see that? People need to know they are loved, even me, who you probably do think is a cold, hard bitch, but I’m not! I’m not. I do need to be

loved.” Her voice falls with her eyes. “And you don’t do that very well.” She asks: “Do you think about me? I don’t know when I am not thinking about you. Do you miss my smell? I stole your favorite pillow because I wanted to smell you. I just broke in and stole your favorite pillow because you weren’t around and you wouldn’t pick up your stupid phone. And you probably didn’t even notice.” “By braining me, do you mean performing a frontal lobotomy?” I ask, letting on. “That way you could have my mind. Or, at least, the area that processes rational thought. There’s a word for that: ratiocination.” I bounce the eyebrows. “Fun fact.” And looking to her, I say: “Ana—I do think about you. When I’m reading, I think about you. You pop into my head and I’ll think: This is strange; the material that currently occupies my mental faculties is an unseemly conduit to thoughts of an unrelated person, meaning you, as you’re totally off topic, but recently it’s been happening with greater frequency. And I don’t like it. I mean . . . I do, but you can understand why I don’t.” Ana frowns, half-way ironic. “I’m sure you mean those sweet things you say in the sincerest way possible, but won’t you tell me what I need to hear? Just once?” “Yes,” I say, slotting the bottom jaw side to side. “I think of you more often than not. On solitary walks of aimless ambition, I think of you. In bed trying to sleep, staring at the ceiling, I think of you. When I’m reading, I’ll stop and stare at the calling void because I’m thinking of you. To diversion myself, I position books in random locations, or arrange and rearrange them in disorderly stacks, dropping them in places where I’ll pick them up, flip through some pages, find something of interest that will distract me from thinking of you. Because you are always in my head. I want you to be in there with me.” “That’s why there are books everywhere?” she asks. For a second, we stare. “This morning I planted Nausea on the wicker hamper in the bathroom. I tucked Notes from Underground between two cushions in the couch, dropped Midnight’s Children on the floor and nudged it under a sofa in

the den, a corner poking out. I stationed Bami’s copy of Infinite Jest in the cupboard between two boxes of lentil soup and The Origins of Virtue in a box of breakfast cereal.” “Come ’ere,” she says, kissing me. “I fucking love your ass.” When she says it I breathe deeply, and maybe a second too late, say: “If you love it so much, then why don’t you kiss it.” She laughs and gradually looks inward. “What were you thinking?” she asks, curiously, intoned by some sort of devotion. “Just when I said I love you, what were you thinking?” “About this strange breathlessness you induce,” I say. “Mm-hmm, and before? When you were all by your lonesome?” “I hate this word, but I was philosophizing, and I was doing it badly. But you can help.” “Sure thing,” says Ana; chirping, buoyant. “What were you philosophizing?” “I believe that because I’m human, I contain the gamut of human conditions. Regardless of this statement’s implications, it’s true. Because I’m human, I’m capable of anything within the human capacity. I am made of the good and evil I don’t believe in, and there’s nothing I can’t imagine myself doing; though, to be purely logical, I wouldn’t do half of what I imagine.”³⁴ “Yup,” says Ana, chirping, “just as I suspected. You’re a bad philosopher.” “Wasn’t that clever of me?” she asks. “Just kidding,” she says. “You’re good, and you are good at everything you do.” “Actually, I’m bad at a lot of things,” I say. “Like communicating with people.” “I most definitely agree: You are bad at calling me and thinking about me and loving me like you should. But that’s okay. I don’t care.” “Yes you do.”

“M-mm,” she says. “Nope, I don’t love you anymore.” “Then I don’t love you either.” “Ah! Take that back! Take it back right now!” “No.” “No, I do love you. I do, I do!” she says. And she says: “You can tell me you love me now.” I laugh and kiss her and say: “You know I do. But that doesn’t make me good.” “I think maybe you don’t want to be good, but you are. You have to know that.” “Fine,” I say. “Then I’m half bad.” “You’re not half bad!” “Thanks,” I say, “You’re not half bad yourself.” She minces. “You.” “I haven’t slept,” I say, standing. “Sleep with me?” “I’m not tired,” she says. “But I will do creepy things like lie in bed and watch you sleep, and whisper sweet nothings in your ears.” When I drift off, it’s lucid, and from afar, she says: “You’re a beautiful bear.” Concerned, foraging the pantry, I ask: “Where’d I hide the honey?”

. . .

“Hannah,” I call out, down the hallway.

“Hannah,” I say. “Hey, how are you?” “Hello, sir,” she says, “I’m well. How are you?” “Did Bami tell you about anything that happened over Christmas break?” “No, Bami, no . . . but he has been rather unkind of late.” “Okay, then what did Johnny tell you?” “Johnny? Well, I heard what happened. I’m sorry, do you want to talk about it?” “Did you approach Ana about what he told you?” I ask. “Yes, it was terrible.” “After you asked her about it, did Bami take you aside and tell you that I already knew all about it? He told you I’m sensitive to the situation, and we want to minimize gossip?” “Yes, that is what he said. Then it’s true?” “No, but I know Bami. What exactly did Johnny tell you?” “Oh, you don’t know! Truly I thought you knew, I did.” “What happened over break?” I ask. “She hooked up with Whitey. You wouldn’t know him, he moved to Atlanta years ago.” “Was it a kiss, or sex?” “Sex. I heard it was sex.” “You’re sure?” “Yes, fully sure. I would have told you, if I had known! I trusted Bami, he can be very kind and convincing . . . I feel so foolish, I should have told you. I’m, I’m so sorry.”

“No, don’t be,” I say. “I knew. I told Bami to tell you that, but don’t tell him I talked to you.” “You knew?” “Of course, I just wanted to see if you would tell me the truth. And you did.” “But—.” “No time,” I say, backpedalling, turning to run. “I’m late for history!” “Fuck,” I say, walking through the parking lot, starting the car. “Fuck,” I whisper, chewing the lip, staring at the hands on the steering wheel.

6571

The wind feels the face, and herds of livestock ruminate the sky. White cows tread through blue fields, and their silhouettes graze on townhouse facades. “James?” asks Hodge. “Why don’t you want to believe?” “You wouldn’t either if you could see,” I say. “When we were younger I thought I was sheltering you, but it looks like I raised you blind. Truth, yes; trust, no. Trust is unnecessary once you accept the truth of human nature. I’ll help you, Hodgepodge. I’ll teach you to see again.” A married couple sits with their toes in the Lafayette fountain, stirring up ripples. The wife shivers as the clouds over, but the husband fails to notice. On the street corner, a black man wears dark grey sweatpants and a light grey sweatshirt with cut-off sleeves. He is engaged in some sort of patriotic dance, stomping in place, high-legging, twisting at the hips; he talks or sings to himself, waving an American flag in each hand, plastic miniatures, spinning them like windmills in opposite directions. A homeless man sets a trap for squirrels beneath a park bench laid out with woolen blankets; heavy with dead skin and potential dust clouds. Dressed in a checkered blazer and plaid slacks, earth-toned and tattered, the squirrel trapper scavenges the grassy sectors. He digs holes and steals acorns, pocketing them with little laughs, glancing nervously up into the trees; because the squirrels are watching him, as Ana is, sitting on a nearby bench with her hands to her knees. “Hi,” she says, observing the man until he keels over and plays dead, mussing his hair about. “Is he crazy?” I shrug, and for the pun of it, write catch-free lunch on a five-dollar bill, military-crawl to his squirrel trap—a rock ed by a stick—insert the five and trip the contraption. “That was sweet,” she says. “You’re such a good person.” “I think you’re misinterpreting,” I say, deflecting.

“Who is that woman?” asks Ana, pointing to the balcony. “Sometimes I stare at her because she is so beautiful. Don’t you think?” “That’s Mother.” “Your mother?” she asks. “But she is so young.” “No, she’s as old as time.” “What do you mean?” “Timeless,” I say. “She’s timeless.” “Why didn’t you ever point her out before? Introduce me!” “After school,” I say. “Ready?” “I found a note in my bag,” she says. “So spicy-sweet.” “Yea?” “Mm-hmm, signed Mr. Anonymous. Are you Mr. Anonymous?” “Claiming authorship wouldn’t be fair to his anonymity,” I say. “By ruling myself out, I would make Mr. Anonymous a little less anonymous.” She straightens her back and declares: “Then I have a secret irer. You should be jealous.” I scowl, smiling inside, picking her up and fireman carrying her to the car. Mrs. Ramblin says we have thirty minutes to write an essay on Hamlet, demonstrating that we’ve read the material by proposing a theory for Hamlet’s indecision. Doodling, I listen in on subconscious dialogue, waiting for procrastination to jumpstart an inspiring thought. “Quiet!” says Bami, as he walks his notebook to the drop box. “And by quiet I mean quit,” he says. “All of you are stupid.” “I, for one, could care less what you think,” says a waitlisted member of his

harem. “Aw, you could but you don’t,” he says. “ kids, you don’t count sense when you make fewer money.” “You’re an asshole,” says the girl. “Don’t call me an asshole,” he says. “It hurts Mrs. Ramblin’s feelings.” As Bami embroils the class, time takes a at me, and I space out.³⁵ “Hey,” says Ana, finding me in the hallway. “Pretty sure you failed your essay.” She looks me over. “What are you doing?” “It’s unclear,” I say, frowning. “But I think I’ve decided to drop out of school.” “No,” she says. “No, you can’t! Babe, you promised. You have to finish school! I know you’re a genius, but—” “I’m not,” I say. “That word is casually misused. Genius in its original Roman meaning is acceptable, but its modern usage is negligible.” “What?” she asks. “Sorry, you’re speaking too fast.” “Oh!” I say, laughing. “Forget it or I’ll go tangential. I’m absolutely phrenic. Let’s go.” “No,” she says. “No, I am staying here. Babe, school is important to me. I need to finish and go to college, and so should you. Once we earn our degrees then we can go wherever your stubborn heart desires. But . . . if you won’t, then I guess you don’t have to, but I will.” “I understand,” I say, backpedalling, making for the side-exit. “I’ll see you after school.”

. . .

“The devil,” says a fun-eyed beauty, hailing me on the street. “Yea?” I ask. “Wait, you’re the girl who did dirty, dirty things to Bami.” “Oh, the Cock. You .” “So you were in the coffee shop?” I ask. “I didn’t see you amongst the zombies.” “Maybe I was hiding,” she says. “Maybe my eyes were watching God.” “Right,” I say, deflecting. “That was actually a trick question.” She puckers up her face, thinking hard. “Cahoots—” “Exactly,” I say. “God is undead.”

. . .

Open-spigot, I drink from a bag of boxed wine, on a long walk, dark out, rambling under the influence of soporifics.³ “Mumbles!” calls Bami, sitting with Mother. He hops off the balcony and meets me in Lafayette, holding up a bag full of dry-wrinkle mushrooms, jangling them like a cowbell. “Shrooms?” I ask. “Shrooms,” he says. “Prepare to fuck aliens.” He dices and divvies up the mushrooms, half an ounce, dribbling them over peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwiches. “That’s seven grams each,” I say, selecting a tidbit to nibble on. Bami laughs out a hearty yes-I-know, wolfing his down.

But I work at the tidbit like a morsel of rumors, as if chewing the fat with it. “ that speech you gave in Mrs. Ramblin’s last year?” I ask. “About owning yourself? It was the day before you were suspended for reciting ‘Catullus 16.’” “Classic hilarity,” he says. “What’d I say?” I grin. “You’ll play stupid if it means you get to hear your own words.” “Eat your shroomwich,” he says, a mouthful. “Drugs are fun.” We wait it out in the Room for Improvement, standing at windows, gazing into Lafayette. “Look at our city,” says Bo. “Behold our power over nature.” “Are you kidding?” I ask, inexplicably snapping. “Your power over nature?” “Yes, of course,” he says. “She is our bitch.” I laugh. “You stupid fucking humans. What power? Tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes—your nature’s bitch. Technology? Nuclear bombs are popping zits compared to the destructive power of quasars, supermassive black holes, gamma ray bursts, hypernovae. The universe is madder and more terrorizing than all the furor of your sirens.” “Christophe, you are depressively real,” he says. “You cannot see.” “What can’t I see—New York? Tokyo? Show me when man has built the planet his cities stand on. Show me when we’ve earned the right to pollute and destroy ourselves.” Bo falls off with Bami’s face. “You have ridiculous expectations,” he says, sitting at the harpsichord, deeply in thought, facepalming now and again. When Bami sits up he blinks purposefully, jogging at a few keys before posturing himself on the bench. “Life’s a Stage Play,” he says. “Elijah Bossenbroek.” He moves to the music, becomingly, flushed with outpourings of color and riot.

He cries silently, turned a blind eye to, faceless but for the ferocity between his eyelids—electrified slivers, his nostrils like cocaine; and it’s not Bami crying but self-moving tears, the face of a weeping statue porously laughing, brimming with rain dance and immanent downpour. Silent, listen; we are maelstroms inside. Intracranial light shows. Skin crawl. Inhalations, and emanations of aggressive dread. Communicate. It’s dead-air blackout. “We’re about to die,” I say, remaining calm. “Fool,” says Bo Jean. “One can survive everything nowadays. Even death.” “No, seriously. The mushrooms are eating us.” The mind is an out-of-body experience—but my animal perceives itself, and the body becomes an out-of-mind experience; it’s as if consciousness is composed of particles faster than light speed, phantasmagorical, shuttling mental mass in and out of dimension. Nuclei animate the woodwork, agitated, in that the foreground of glass tessellates the background of trees. The sills throb gently. And windowpanes ripple to the pulse’s crescendo. Vision sharpens. Looking into city woods. Far off but everything close at hand, touching it from any distance. I feel small, smaller than ever, hands in the hair, follicles prickling the skin so I pluck them. My gods brainstorm with lightning bolts, and they microwave my mind-movie popcorn: filmic flashbacks, lava-spittle, kernel ejaculae. “Who’s missing?” asks Bami, searching wildly. I crouch, and there is breathlessness in the chest; minutes that I am unaware of; poking at Bami, who sits up from lying down to the shock of the Lazarus effect. “Where am I?” he asks, looking about. He interrogates the window. “Who are you?” “Bami talks to windows,” I tell the class. “Who’s missing?” he asks. “Somebody’s missing.” “You,” I say. “You’re missing.”

“I feel something,” I say, standing. “I think it’s a feeling. Yes, a feeling. It’s definitely viscous. No, you’re not a feeling. You’re a thought. False alarm, everyone, it’s a thought.” “Thwarted again,” I say, pacing. “I’ll get you, feelings. I’ll get you.” I work it out. “I require emotions—but no, I cache them in surplus. I simply devalue their demand, preferring to observe them as if my emotional self is a patient in the psych ward.” “Mind cancer,” says Bami, clutching his skull. “It’s mind cancer!” I turn to him. “I imagine that’s fatal.” I ask: “What’s the diagnosis, doctor? Is it the Mortiferous Trees?” “Fingerbang your muse!” says Bami. “My Clio, historicize the future!” “Are you fucking aliens?” I ask. “Have you splooged in humanoid womankind?” “Go fellate Spock,” he says, snapping, clutching at his temples. He stands, leaping at the window. “I will defenestrate you!” he says. “You there! Show yourself!” Murmuring, he turns from the glass. “Giggling hellions, who’s missing?” “You’re rapt-maniacal,” I say. “It’s like spaceships and explosives and polychromasia!” “Dynamite!” he says. “Diatomaceous earth!” “From whom can we seize diatomaceous earth?” I ask. “It is immaterially online.” “Wait,” I say. “What are we talking about?” “Diatomaceous earth!” “No, no, dynamite would confuse us. Our explosives must remain mental.” “The Womb!” he says.

“Guilt-ridden vagina of Eve!” I say. “I banish you from Eden! Go to your Womb!” And I watch him go. “When Bami flees I feel much closer to him.” “Who said that?” I ask, looking around. “Shit. I’m a nonentity. I don’t exist.” I am a voice in your head, my mind tells me. The seventh degree of separation. “Go to Peru,” it says out loud. “I’m going to Peru,” I declare. “But you don’t have a ticket,” it says, speaking logic. “We’ll buy a ticket,” I reply, looking around. “Wait, who’s we? Oh my god Bami was right. Someone’s missing. I need to buy that ticket. Where are you, mobile desktop? It’s statistically unfeasible for a desktop computer to chronically misplace itself. I don’t care if you’re fastened to timber and fancy yourself a laptop. There you are, waiting for your bubble bath? No, I don’t recommend it. Now who put you on the tub? Let’s see, plugged in, power on; yes, that’s the spirit—airlines, Lima, purchase—a-ha! Print. Printer—ah, the Room for Improvement. What?! Where’d that tree limb come from? Pattern me stumped, just look at it; there are geometries in that flower; stenciled between those leaves and leafstalks.”³⁷ And when a voice says: “James” I find myself outside, studying a silhouette in the fog. It’s three-dimensionalized, and I hold a hand to the lamplighted mist so that its double floats in the air; but again the voice calls: “James” and Mac appears, but he is gowned in silence and lights flash on and off like a hand waving in front of the face. “Christopher, babe!” says Ana, snapping her fingers and asking where I’ve been; it’s six in the morning and she has to go to practice. Looking at her, I giggle at random. The trip has lightened to fractal thought cycles—minor epiphanies that I forget as soon as I memorize them. So I laugh in the iridescence of mercury-lined hats and take Ana by the hand, racing her to the car . . .

“What just happened?” I ask, sitting up, reclined in the driver’s seat. A cigarette burn fixtures the ceiling; I stare at it, quizzically engrossed. “Hi,” says Ana, watchfully. “You had a bad trip.” “What time is it?” “Eleven.” Pulled over on the interstate, I creep along the shoulder, gathering speed, waiting for a break in traffic. The sleeper lines wail like strummed vocal chords, something of Gregorian monks chanting with jackhammers, or brothers humming gutturally while shaking one another. “Should I drop you off at school?” I ask, after a silence. “Babe, for me, will you come too?” she asks. “Finish school. Please don’t drop out. I you traveling, but graduate. Then go.” “I’ll think about it,” I say, staring off. “No, don’t do that!” she says. “Look at me! Talk to me! What do you think ? Have you even considered me in your plans? Have you considered me at all?” “Yes,” I say, thinking it over. “What if we kept a notebook? That way we can write down what we’re feeling. Plus, it’ll preserve our mentalities in hardcopy format.” “No, Baboo, you just won’t get it. I want you to talk to me.” “I don’t know how,” I say. “And before you say I haven’t tried, I have, and I am.” She takes me by the wrist and inspects a quote on the palm. “What does that say?” “Hope is a waking dream,” I say. “It’s Aristotle.” “What does it mean?”

“It depends; maybe you think of hope as eventually waking up to a dream cometrue.” “To you,” she says. “Tell me what it means to you.” “Hope,” I say. “It’s like I’m sleeping and all these fantastic things happen, but at dawn, as I stir, reality creeps through the blinds. Lucidly, I attempt to ferry over the figments of my dreamspace, but they’re so far behind me and I know they’ll miss the boat; or, I’ll look back too soon, and they vanish like trust, belief and everything I hope for.” I look to her. “It’s similar to how I woke up and realized my friends are good liars.” “What?” she asks, controlling herself. “I know it was more than a kiss,” I say. “Hannah told me.” “You fucking idiot. Obviously she will tell you what you desperately want to hear. Fuck this shit. If you don’t want to be with me, say so, but stop tormenting me!” “I’m not.” “You are!” she says. “You do not trust me and you are calling me a liar. I don’t know for sure you didn’t fuck that whore, but I am not telling you you did something you did not do!” “That’s because you know I’m not a liar.” “You are so full of shit! Just because you tell the truth like it is your job does not mean I am a liar.” She watches. “Christopher, babe, look at me. I am telling you the truth.” “Actually, you’re lying.” “You say you know nothing, but what you really mean is you know everything!” “I’m dropping you off,” I say. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

“Of course. Let us not talk like adults. Run away, you bitch-ass little baby.” I take her hand, but I resist the thumbtuck. “I don’t see why Hannah would lie.” “Oh, here is a wild guess—because she is in love with you!” she says, as I pull up curbside on Abercorn. “Or maybe Bami told her that because I called him out one time. Babe, I don’t know, but I am not lying. Whitey was gross and hitting on me, but he fucked off because I told him so. Maybe he was upset with me and told people we hooked up when we didn’t.” “Okay,” I say, entering the Garden. “Forget it.” In bed, I think about the appearance of sunlight at midday, the room naturally lighted up not by brightly yellow streaming rays, but the bluish-pale transparency of indoor daylight. “I would lie myself to sleep when I was little,” I say, to a slumbering Ana. “That I wouldn’t be grounded in the morning, or my arm wouldn’t be broken.” Frowning, I count her breaths. You’ll tell me when you can. “Yes,” I whisper, drifting off. “This is how I lie myself to sleep.” I wake up alone, but there’s a single-subject notebook on the desk. It’s opened to the first page, as if patiently awaiting me. Considering recent events, I chew, I write.N1 “Nonsensical,” I say, ripping it up, trying again. “Ana!” I say; she comes eating ice cream, lipping a spoon. Glancing at the notebook, she sits on the bed. “Read to me.” I scoot the desk chair close and read slowly, sounding out each idea. She stands and circles around, reading along, strands of her hair brushing against the cheeks.N2 “Babe, you sound exhausted,” she says. “Sleep, I want to write you.” It’s dusk when I roll over, into Ana, asleep with her hand on the notebook.N3

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“The fair,” says Mother. “I know,” I say. “The fair.” Leaving early for school, I find myself in the cafeteria. Bami and Johnny engage in a battle of wits, while Ana, Laney, and friends stand around a circular bi-fold table. “Baboo!” says Ana. “Where have you been? You weren’t in school on Friday or yesterday, which I understand, but I didn’t see you all weekend either. Your phone has been dead since Saturday. You weren’t in the Garden. What am I supposed to think?” “Today isn’t Monday?” I ask. “No,” she says; quiet, softly, wanting. She hands me the notebook and res her friends. Her entries are written in different pens, consisting of slight variations in penmanship. Johnny peers over the shoulder, reading with me.N4 “What do you think?” I ask. “Do you understand?” “I can stand under it,” he says, holding it overhead, dropping it. “I can stand over it. But I cannot under stand it.” Bami sighs. “It is what it is.” “What does that mean?” I ask. “Is is a common denominator for what seems, but seem detracts from human meaning. Although we require is, there is no is. Is seems.” “Is seems that you are an idiot,” says Bami. “Don’t call Ana and is seems you’ll worry less about what is and more about what isn’t.” I sort of laugh. “What I was leading to is that you are lying to me, but you want

it to seem like you aren’t. Everyone is who they are, but everyone wants to seem like someone else. You are my friends, but it seems that you are not—or is it the other way around?” Bami laughs. “Tell me a good lie over a bad truth and I will love you.” Bo Jean leans forward. “You have not loved until you lie for it.” “Fuck my friends,” I say. Johnny wags his finger at me. “Friends who are your enemies will tell you lies you wish were true, but enemies who are you friends will tell you truths you wish were lies.” “Whatever happened to friends who are friends?” I ask, as the bell rings. With pen to notebook, the ballpoint beads with ink, looking up to inspect the syntax of a thought, when Mrs. Ramblin calls my name. Her top shelf is lined with carnival glass vases, which look like tall splashes in pools of oily mud; frozen there, or sculpted. Their metallic iridescence gleams in the fluorescent light, so that, surprised by not having noticed them before, those vases— shimmering like petrol mixed with rainwater—I discover myself at a gas station, aged seven, watching potholes gather runoff. A collared dog with a pedigree drinks from one, tongue-sloshing, unaware of the colors that refract on the puddle’s surface; and unaware of me, in a truck, observing ripples over rainbowwater, distorting its peacock reflection. Melbi, I think; like nacreous clouds—the aesthetics of self-destruction. Again, Mrs. Ramblin calls on me. “What for?” I ask, wondering aloud. Graded papers and new reading materials have been ed out, a age of which I am to read. Anxieties squirm through the chest, unprepared, a desire to hide myself, but as I begin, I ask: “Why did I receive a B− on this paper?” “Generally it was well written,” says Mrs. Ramblin. “But it wasn’t what I assigned. In your papers, everyone, forget the big picture. Avoid generalizations and big ideas. I want you to focus on a single scene. In your next paper, give me specific points ed by the text.”

“No,” I say, browsing her marginalia. “Shakespeare didn’t write with words alone. His meanings aren’t found in the text but in how the text is intuited, which is why scholars still publish literary theories on a four-hundred-year-old play. Of course, the fact remains I didn’t follow your instructions. I get it. It’s monkey nature here: human see, human do. Imitation over creativity, obedience over free thinking.” “Don’t flummox the oxen,” says Bami. “You don’t want me to think for myself, do you Mrs. Ramblin?” I ask. “You want me to think within the confines of the container you provide. No, don’t deny it. Our school system educates people to think freely inside the box, producing a continuous assimilation of quasi-intelligent robots who think for themselves within the limits of what they have been taught to think. We are led to believe that we know what you teach us, as if it’s that simple, as if for this reason we are not required to think for ourselves because the thinking has been done for us. “Herein lies the fatal misconception of birth, and the abortive continuum that follows. You, Mrs. Ramblin, and your miserable system, are responsible for the psychological deformities of the born and raised; because we are the misconceived, the brainwashed, the mentally disenfranchised. Recently, I decided to drop out of school. I wasn’t committed to the idea until now, but the truth is I quit a long time ago, doing well academically while actively suppressing, then repressing, my best. Who else was told to think less big and more practically? Who else was silenced for asking questions no one wanted him to ask because they didn’t have the answers? Who else failed to understand why none of his teachers dreamed at full capacity? “True, thinking hurts your brain, but if your brain doesn’t hurt when you apply it to a non-insight related problem, then you aren’t thinking hard enough. You’re buying into sold-out teachers. They don’t want your brain to hurt so they paralyze it. They tell you what to believe and how to believe it, whether that’s in God or in their system, taking away your right to think hard by giving you easy answers. Fuck God. Fuck easy answers. I want to work out my mind. I want to break a mental sweat. I want to brain-hurt. “I’m done, but I hope you fight like guerrillas, and discover on your own time. When not in class, go out and learn. Play with knowledge. Synthesize and create.

Use your brains as if you were born to think.” I chew on it, looking about the classroom. “Oh, and Mrs. Ramblin, I told you I wanted to believe in something—well this is it: “I believe in God as created by man, for man, and to the misguided betterment of mankind. I believe in a God who understands man as man needs to be understood, and in a God who is understood as man needs to understand him. I believe in a God who changes with the minds of men, who adapts to their society, their culture and their age. I believe that God is real for every person who believes in him. God is our super-self. He is the anthropomorphized consciousness of mankind; who presides over our struggle between humanity and inhumanity; who we call upon when man tells men that mankind should be better, while waging war and acting in his name. Because God is mankind’s alter ego, and mankind is God’s foil. “God is the projection of who we want to be, and we are the introjection of God. “God is our reference point. God is our scapegoat. God is our failure. God is us. “There, there is my belief.” Sitting, standing, I follow my words out of the classroom, and walk home.

. . . J11

I dream of carnival; the cloaked atmosphere, and that odorous medley of sweets and sours; of burned meats, fried dough. Colognes and perspiration mask the faint hint of wafting feces, humid and aromatic on the olfactories, and the people breathe deeply with an upwards tilt to their noses, pretending they don’t love the smell of their own shit. I spend several days in the library researching the history of carnival: Carnavale. Time of merrymaking before Lent. From Carnelevare: To remove meat. To raise

flesh. Walking home, I unlock the backdoor to the Garden, but Mother speaks from the balcony. The tall windows gloam behind her, and their insides shine yellow-gold against the dusk. Instead of carnival I say let’s go to City Market and act like tourists, browsing Savannah’s art galleries and chocolate factories; or we can walk River Street and watch SCAD kids design intricate landscapes with spray paints, and buy palm leaves from the homeless, manipulated into flowers, pale roses. Anything, I say, heard between the words; anything but carnival. Staring into her, I think: read my mind. I feel it tingle on the tongue, the ululating vibrations of a silent ahhh! The while blankfaced, expressionless. “The fair,” I mutter. “The fair,” she says. “I know,” I say. “The fair.” Run, says a voice; and I kick off sandals and sprint towards the Island Expressway, veering in and out of forests, freely, where ideas wander in sylvan trance. “Excellent,” I gasp, stopping where the moon hangs heavy above the river. I step down the bank and kneel into a slow fall, to the thud of knees in soft but reliable earth. The water runs with the moonlight. Deciding against swimming across, I stand, the feet dusted with specks of leaves and wavy lines of dirt. To the sky, I stretch out, brandishing the chest and in-curving the back, arms widespread, as if to embrace the puppeteer above—moving slow and methodically. “Excellent,” I repeat. It is a whisper, something breathed. I jog over the bridge, speeding up, thinking of Ana, but a stick catches between the run of feet and I trip, hands skidding palmate over asphalt—up and sprinting before the pain s; feeling it trickle into the unconscious, fresh and distant, faintly layered.³⁸ I sprint as fast as the cars that slow down to observe me, like some jailbroken ape from the zoo, siding along their enger windows to eyeball them with the mouth widely open, electric-eyed, uncaged, hysterical. Running and breathing

and laughing and thinking, racing myself for miles until I’m jogging down the beach, where the moon dangles huge above the ocean; watchers sit on the shore, alone, or in pairs, searching for the strings. The extragalactic suns are out, too, and the star-sitters filter sand through their fingers. The Warlocks’ beach house is illuminated by a bonfire on the waterfront. Johnny sits with his little sister, Hannah, and Bami with Laney, amongst a variety of peers, listening to Andy, the guitarist, strum out a conversation. I observe them from the kitchen window, drinking water. You should fuck Laney, says a voice. Piss off everyone. “Whiskey?” Bami asks, startling me as he collects glasses from the cupboard. “What does Ana have over you?” I ask. “This drama,” says Bami, shrugging me off. As he exits, I say: “Fuckably innocent, wasn’t it?” Nutating in the threshold, he voids into the floor mat, then turns away. “Tell me,” I say, as Johnny enters. “Tell me what I already know, says the fool,” he says. “I need to know more than intuitively, more than hearsay, from someone who saw.” “Would you rather see what I saw, or saw into what I see?” he asks. “The latter, as long as it’s true.” “Then I promise you the truth.” “And what’s that?” I ask. “I will deceive you.” Johnny manifests a photograph, sleight-of-hand, flipping it around too fast to see its image. He holds up its backside, and I reach for it, but it is blank on both

sides. I flip it around a third time and swear at a photograph of me in this exact moment. “A lie is like a magic show: You can look for the illusion, or you can watch the magic.” “Wait, you practice magic?” I ask. “But you’re Johnny. You’re the fool.” “You see what you are looking for,” he says, conjuring a mirror with a snap of his fingers. It’s the mirror from Mrs. Ramblin’s classroom. He taps the glass and it splinters into creased fragments; dragging his hand along the surface, top to bottom, the cracks melt into a unified image. He drops the mirror but it floats midair, his hands buffering the frame like a spherical ball of energy, shrinking it until it vanishes. When I look to him I feel the weight of the mirror tug on the neck, hanging from a lanyard, seeing him like something found that has been a long time hiding in the open. “You promised me the truth,” I say, “and the truth was that you would deceive me. But there’s more to it, isn’t there? You deceived me by making me believe that you would deceive me, but you didn’t, did you? The ultimate deception, the truth of illusion, is that a magician shows you what you don’t see. I deceived myself because I didn’t see what you were actually doing with the mirror. I watched the magic.” I hold up the mirror and say: “Now that I see, I almost wish I didn’t.” “You looked in the mirror, but did you see through the looking glass?” “Maybe I don’t want to,” I say. “Maybe I need to see my own reflection.” Verging on the fire, Bami stops me by the humerus. His eyes search mine with a pleading quality, but he does not plead. “Don’t do it.” “I have a question for Bo,” I say. “Why do men hate women?” “Bo isn’t here right now.” “Then I’ll leave a message,” I say, chewing. “But not tonight.”

The gut gurgles with social indigestion, butterflies angry and stir-crazy; the shoulder blades ache like exit wounds, and numbness flash-freezes the core, overtaking the diffusion of mad, hot things moving through me as I imagine myself in Andy’s position.³ “Can I play a song?” I ask him. He hands me the guitar. “This one’s by Neil Young,” I say. “‘Don’t Let It Bring You Down.’” I emerge acoustically, and vibe out saudadic—anthologizing years of an unknown yearning, feeling in my voice the percolation of a slow-drip nostalgia. I fall off almost tear-brimmed and set aside the guitar. Hannah asks why I’m sweaty, diaphoretic to be exact, laughing with me when I tell her, halfway unbelieving, sensitive to her own gullibility. “It’s true,” I say, sitting beside her, a length between us. “I ran here.” “Barefoot?” she asks, stealing me by the calf. She sluices her grip over the beady perspiration, down to the ankle, putting the foot in her lap as she strokes a finger down its sandy, callused pad, collecting the residue on her fingertip so that a wet, linear trail bisects the sole. “Mr. Christopher,” she says, “may I inquire as to your true identity?” Her voice is puzzled intelligence; high, curiously whimsical. “I have the funniest feeling you aren’t from this world. Could you be, by any chance, a storybook character?” “It’s possible, but who?” I ask. “I would say . . . Tarzan.” I wonder what flirting is; what to say, how guys pick up girls. “I am Tarzan,” I say, deciding against referencing Jane. “And I can prove it.” “Is that so?” “There are woods by Back River. I’ll show you.” “Anyone can climb a tree,” says Laney.

“Can you run through the canopies?” I ask her. “Hannah, come on, I’ll show you.” “I’d like to see this,” says Laney. “Wait up, I’ll grab my sweater.” She ducks inside, and I take Hannah by the hand, taking off to the tug and jolt of our shoulder sockets. Outside the firelit perimeter, she looks to me through the wallowed mess of her thick-wild hair. “But Laney,” she says, her fingers dangled loosely in our hands. Two sparkles that mimic the firelight punctuate her inquiry, and the wind catches her mane, long hairs whipping about the contours of her skull, threshed like wind chimes. I squint into the sconce of vivid dark orange, to where Laney stands on the doorsill, crossing her arms. She peers into the blackness, searching for us; keeneyed, suspicious. “She knows,” I say. “She knows?” asks Hannah. “The way,” I say, and a chill prickles us. It’s February, by the ocean, and I feel a shudder course through her, deeper than skin. We jog to Back River along the beachfront, cutting through the dunes and veering into a patch of forest. Hannah frowns as I shimmy up a tree. I laugh and look down. “Are you coming, Jane?” I ask. Glance askance, arms akimbo—she looks up, deeply thoughtful. “But Jane is . . .” “We broke up,” I say. It’s a half-breathed echo, so again I say: “We broke up.” My words vibrate like belief; the knell of a metal pipe on a wooden rail. Hannah climbs the tree and sits with her back against the trunk, while I perch further out, bouncing up and down, procrastinating, testing the branch’s pliability. Its strength is in its give, so I pluck a twig from a leafy offshoot and skin its bark

with the thumbnail, peeling sinews from the core in stringy lengths of green; the nostrils flare to the scent of fresh wood, and I persuade the twig’s ends into a downward bent, gradually increasing the application of pressure until it snaps; twisting it clockwise, counterclockwise until its fibers unfurl like a soggy, spitted-out toothpick. “Do you want to talk about it?” asks Hannah. “You already know,” I say. “I told you I knew about Whitey because I didn’t want you to mention it to Bami. I also lied because I didn’t want you to feel bad. So I understand why I lied to you, but I still need to understand why they lied to me.” “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I’m going to kiss you,” I say, grazing fingertips over her face, into her hair; she nuzzles the hand, kissing at the scraped and bloodied palm. I go rigid—a rising panic, but talk it out, exhaling cool and detached. The prognosis of our touch diffuses like breathing in long and slowly; her smiles, although slight and unsure, are all wanting, and she licks her lips, dry-swallowing the lump of moths and butterflies assembled in her throat. “‘What was your favorite song by the National?” I ask, thumbing her lips. “You said ‘Brainy’ was your second.” “‘Slow Show,’” she says—so that when she glances down, up, I kiss her. Then we’re on the forest floor and she asks if I’m truly single. “Truly,” I say, with saliva on her pelvis, neck, breasts. “We broke up.” And voices cry: Fuck her, egging me on. Yes, fuck her, I think. Understand what it means to be human. But at her expense? I ask. Hannah, who trusts, loves me—can I do this to her? Yes, replies a voice; you’re doing it right now. And everything goes soft but I fight it and lurch forward, holding on, thumbs in the small of her back, hard at it from behind; but my effort is vain and I sink into

deadweight, on top, still inside, a hand bunching up her hair. “I don’t . . . we can’t,” I say, redressing, running to the house. “Take me home,” I tell Bami. “Johnny . . . Back River.” I abuse the headrest and my breathing acts strangled. Purge, let it out, but there is no emotional drainage. This was simulation. There is no catharsis. “You fool,” says Bami. “Oh, and you are?” “No, seriously, who are you?” I ask. “You have more faces than the moon.” He turns hard, and the windshield reflects the backside of a magazine—it has a sense to it as it slides across the dashboard. He accelerates and it springs against the enger window, falling to the knees, propped against the glove box like sheet music. It waits there asking me to read it, but I say no, defiant against things that come to me. “Answer me, why?” he asks. “To learn how to lie,” I say. “Telling the truth is an easy answer, for me at least, but only because I’m good at it. The consequences don’t scare me. So yes, I’m trying on your perspective. I put myself in your shoes and I’m taking them for a walk. There’s one thing I can’t figure out, though. Why lie when given every opportunity to tell the truth?” “Come on, the truth?!” he says. “You’re playing stupid,” I say. “Congratulations on Harvard. I’ll be in South America.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “Other than me, Ana was the one good thing you had, and now you’re throwing us under the bus. Ana fucked up and she knows it, and—and if you don’t see that we love you, then so be it, but grow the fuck up. We aren’t out to get you.” “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I’m done with you. Done with everyone. Because Bo

Jean was right. People are stupid.” “What should I have done?” he asks. “Tell you the truth? Don’t honestly suggest that I should have told you the truth.” “I doubt it’s that difficult to understand.” Bami looks over. “One time Truth knocked on my door. It said: I’m here to destroy you. I looked it in the eye and told it: My world is beautiful. Don’t fuck it up. Because me, I believe one truth: There is no other truth. Truth is what you make it, but the truth is a lie.” “I see your points,” I say. “But it’s too late. I need to lose myself.” “Then get,” he says, laughing, resignedly amused. “And get a clue on your way. Fuck it, I’ll give you two. One, don’t expect find yourself when you lose yourself. You don’t know who you are because you didn’t create who that is.” “If there’s someone I need to find, I know it’s not me,” I say. “I didn’t mean lose myself as in to find myself again. I meant disappear. I meant fuck you, I’m gone. I meant lose myself.” “All I hear is blah-blah-blah buttwhine,” says Bami, pulling up to the Garden. The magazine falls out curbside, a National Geographic. “I’m taking this.” “Go for it,” he says, as I close the door. The Garden is lit up with the fluorescence of a haunted house, afterhours, when the overheads turn on and the monsters come out, interacting like humans. Tossing the magazine on the desk, I regard the bed, asleep with Ana, turning off the lights as I move to the den. The futon is thin black velvet; “Mohair,” I say, sounding it out as I work a tuft of fabric between thumb and index finger, like pinching the loose rolls of a soft-skinned animal, starved by famine. Flashing the lights, Ana ghosts me, wrapped in blankets. They fall around her in layers like so many cloaks, clasping them together at her breastbone. “Why did you turn out the lights?” she asks. “I waited up for you. I had a bad feeling. Like something was wrong.”

She asks: “You didn’t want to sleep with me?” “No,” I say. “I wanted to be alone.” “Do you still?” “Yes.” “Sleep with me,” she says, holding out her hand, hanged in limbo. “Will you?” “What time is it?” “Five.” “Let’s drive.” “Tybee?” she asks, in the car, still donning her cloaks. The road is paved with silence; Bami is back at Johnny’s, so I park by the pier. “There’s something about water,” says Ana, as a beachcomber sloshes our ankles. “Yea.” “It is best not to talk about it,” she says. Down the coastline, whitecaps glitter green with bioluminescent phytoplankton. Ana walks ahead, dreamily out there, where ocean and sky immerge with distance. Her footprints glow emerald and jade, and as she turns sideways, kicks at the sand like a child waiting for the slowpoke to catch up—how she kicks and her whole body twirls. She shrugs off the cloaks and sizes-up the water, knickered, her shoulders drawn back. She hurdles the waves, her voice calling from the void: “Will you?” But I watch how light blocks out light, the stars dimming as sunshine steals the sky. Ana emerges sepia-toned, framed by the warmth of dawn. She sluices her hair to one side, combing out the saltwater braids. Drops of ocean freckle her chest, and streamlets break into beads down her skin. The red-crescent sun colors them broken strands of crimson.⁴

Seagulls flock noisily as a little boy runs to the wet sand, testing the temperature with his big toe. His mother kneels in the sand behind him, wrapping her arms about his belly. She tickles her son with a long blade of dune grass, and his nose twitches when she brushes it with the fine strokes of a painter; then she dabs, like the finishing touches. The boy giggles beyond himself, and his laughter swallows him. It catches in his throat so that it chokes him, and he feels for the blade, the mother’s cheek against his ear, looking with him, dangling the grass out of reach each time he grabs at it. His arms flop by his sides, resigned, and his mother holds the blade steady. He studies it with scientific dissection, nearly cross-eyed—his concentration lost to the perplexity of reason. The boy isn’t laughing now. Maybe he wonders why he laughs when she tickles his nose, that the grass itself isn’t funny. Maybe he wonders what is happening, the substance of that moment between his mother and him; a tender something, the way her high cheekbones fluff like pillows, plump with kindness and love and other things not fully known. The mother observes her boy, but she doesn’t know who he is—just that she loves him. It’s the genes, she thinks; the genes make us feel good, and she tickles her boy and he laughs; laughs until his mother’s heart breaks, for she sees him then as she will always see him; he will forever be a boy of three, that she could never wish for him to grow up, knowing nothing will make him so happy as that blade of grass when it tickles his nose, wielded by her deft and dancing fingers. But the grass slows to a standstill, and she wanders from her son, off into the expanse beyond them. The sounds of mother and son die on the seashore. The boy slips the blade from his mother’s idle fingers, and for a moment, they forget each other. He is transfixed by the grass, and there is no laughter in his stare—methodical, intrigued. Redirecting my attention, Ana thumbs me at the cheekbones, and I squint, splaying sunlight into unwoven threads of dust and gold. “You look at me like birds,” says Ana. “I would go to birds when I was little,” she says. “You remind me of them. I wanted to cup one in my hands like a baby chicken, but of course the bird would hop away when I got too close. Then I would run and the bird would fly to a branch out of reach, and it would perch there just looking at me. I would call for

it, holding out my hands, calling it by name—bird, or swallow, or red robin—but it would just cock its head to the side and look at me. I wanted so bad to know what the bird was thinking. Why it looked at me like that. “Christopher, for all your talk on God, you are just like him. You give people everything in the world except you. You give me a reason to love you, but you don’t give me the time of day. Baboo, why will you not let me know you? You really don’t. You don’t let me know you.” She smiles sadly, longly, so I nod, glancing off. “Last chance,” I say, headshaking. “You have now or never.” She stiffens. “I hope you aren’t talking about what I think you are.” “I am.” “I’m not dealing with this shit,” she says, strutting off. She turns about. “Why would you want to be with me if you thought that? If you know so much then why are you here?” “I believed you would tell me,” I say. “But you won’t. I know that now.” “That is not true.” “It is. You had sex with Whitey.” “Take me home.” Her vocal chords thrum with panic. “I want to go.” “Tell me,” I say, pulling into her driveway. “The world won’t end. If you hadn’t slipped up, if I hadn’t received that errant text, everything would have been perfect. I know it—I always knew it. But knowledge changes things, and I need you to fix it.” “Fix what?! I can’t fix something that didn’t break in the first place!” “Look,” I say. “I need you to see it like I do. Yes, a lie is merely friction, and yes, truth burns, but what lying corrodes the truth will cauterize. It’s so simple. If you can’t take the heat then you won’t see the light. By avoiding conflict you’re

creating conflict.” “There is no conflict! Except you telling me I did something that I did not do!” “Then we’re done,” I say. “I didn’t,” she says, breathless, breathing in small-drowning dry-heaves. She pulls her knees to her chest, but erratically fluctuates, as if to harmonize two contradictory actions into a single motion.⁴¹ “Babe, I swear I didn’t. I didn’t . . . I didn’t—” “Get out.” “Oh god,” she says, panicking. “I am losing you and I didn’t even do anything wrong!” “I’m going now.” “Where will you go?” she asks, looking up; weakly, asthmatic. “Will you be safe?” “It doesn’t matter. Get out.” There is nothing in my voice; she hears my nothingness. I reach past her for the handle and open the door. “I tried,” I say, as she stares, disbelieving. “I tried to make you understand. I don’t care about the sex. Sex is nothing—not unless there’s more to it, like there seemed to be with you. But maybe there isn’t. Maybe it was all imagined. So get out. I won’t be lied to, not big lies. Not when the people I love take me for a fool.” And exiting the car, I say: “I don’t know what you’re waiting for. I’m done with you.” I pick her up, but gingerly, my touch still softened, as if made unconditional by love—and I fight it, to become cold, hard, but there is warmth, and I thaw as I freeze. “Put your feet down,” I say, standing her up, wet and shivering, wrapped in

blankets. “How?” she cries as I walk to the car. It is lamentation, the total loss of self. “How could I—” she says, her voice catching. “Christopher,” she says, swallowing hard, fighting back tears, miserably failing. “How could I tell you that? How could I ever tell you that? I can’t even say it.” She steps forward. “Baboo, I knew you knew. Of course I knew that. But how could I tell you?” A pause. “There. You know now. I told you. Baboo, I told you.” “Say it,” I say. “I did.” “No, you didn’t tell me at all.” I drive and reject my need to make amends, the impulse to stop the car and define our closure. A smirk forms in its place, creased with schadenfreude— taking pleasure in her pain; and in whatever I’m lacking in my own. But wholly out of my control the car fishtails, and quickly she reels me in.

. . .

Ana kneels at her desk, scribbling furiously in the notebook. Linkin Park plays, and I wait for the song to end before I lean over her and read: “People who kill angels deserve to die.” She jumps; her eyes run black like inky stigmata. “Don’t you know about angels?” I ask, almost laughing. “Mm-hmm. You’re an angel,” she says, backhanding her tears.

“Then you couldn’t kill me, could you?” I say. “Angels don’t die. They fall.” “If you fall, if you fell, I was the one who pushed you. But you’ll always be my angel.” “No, I pushed me,” I say, going to her, drying her hair with a towel. “You’re freezing.” “What did you do?” she asks. I say: “Nothing,” and we lie on her bed. She shivers into me, and we are naked —sexless, solemn, puzzling over this thing that is bigger than us. “The lie looked good on you,” I say, tracing her contours. “They do, you wear them well. Your lies look good on you.” “I don’t like to lie,” she says, raising her voice, dropping within the syntax as I grab her, and pull her prone on top of me, jiving until there is orgasm like comic relief. She laughs, falling off, rarefied by her fiery, charismatic glow. Her hair is everywhere thick, wet, knarled, viscous. “I’ve wanted to tell you things,” I say, breathing hard. “Things I felt like I should feel.” “What?” she asks. “They’re exaggerations, but I jotted them down,” I say, reading her a note: “Sometimes I think to tear out my heart and close my fist around it, pumping out the blood, because I want to show you that I bleed. That my heart beats outside my chest, and that I love deeply. And I think to rip out my lungs and hold them up for you, squeezing out the air until they’re deflated leather sacks, because I want to show you how you take my breath away. I think to saw off my feet, so that you can see how you bring me to my knees, to spoon out my eyes to show you how blind I am without you, that you fill me with vision. And I think to cut off my hands and tongue and make them yours, because all my words belong to you.” We look to each other, grinning, and she laughs. “Babe, I don’t want those feelings. I want to know who you are. I want to know what you are thinking, and maybe that you are thinking about me, but that is what you don’t get! You think

you know what I want. Babe, I do not want what you do not have. Those feelings are not you, and frankly, they aren’t me either. We might feel those things deep down, but they aren’t us. I want your mind. I want you to tell me things. Because believe it or not, I can’t read your mind. I can’t see what is going on in there! God! I want to be in your head. I want you to think about me. I want you to hold me without me telling you to hold me. I have to tell you everything! Sometimes I feel lonely when I am lying in your arms. Why? Why?! Because you leave me for other places that I can’t go to. You just go distant and it makes me cry. You make me cry. I hate crying. It’s so crazy because when you come out of your world we’re perfect, but lately you never come out. But I know it is useless even talking about this now because it is too late. I ruined everything.” “It isn’t,” I say. “Too late, I mean. I’m going to Peru, and maybe by the time I return we’ll be ready to start over—we can even make it a cliché. But before that I need to get away for a few days. To Colorado. But I’ll be back before I’m gone.” “Can I take you to the airport when you leave?” she asks. “Yes,” I say, as we fall asleep. “I’ll see you then.”

Spiel Three

658¹⁴²

It’s dusk in the Rockies, nautical twilight, when mountaintops succumb to the black prowl of nightfall, and city lights advance upon the ebb of visible landscape. The new moon is out and the universe unearths itself, made brighter by the absence of moonbeams, outer space turning the planet onto other worlds. Like some watcher, I gaze into the sun-spangled abyss, where stars are born to outshine themselves—brainchildren of darkness. The light from the porch lamp streams into the sky; big, like eyes widely open. Mother’s clothes billow about her, and I rewind back to when she says it, skimming a razor over her words; the possibilities, the intent; rifling through meanings of and reasons for; the while knowing that not a single unnecessary assumption can be shaved from their telling. “Mum?” “Yes, my dream?” “Where are you? Where do you go?” But she swings, and the lamplight feeds the yellow petals that fleck about her pupils, mixed in like sun-splinters cutting up her ocean-blues. She lays down her eyes in her white, blue-veined wrists upturned on her lap. Her feet are bare, and they rub together as they kick lightly forward, her toes tucked in, pale beneath the brushwork of soil. Ashy, red sandstone powders her ankles, and a perfume dusts the air, the earthy spice that clings to her garments when she returns from her walk to the Garden of the Gods; alone, in the evening, roaming after sundown. Mother wets her mouth, and the botanic rearrangements of her fingertips decorate the space between her hands; their formations blossom into spooling rays of prismatic yarn. “Grow young, burn green,” she says. “Time will darken you.”⁴³

The mountain sky bites the lungs; methodically, I exhale a frozen plume of rolling breath. Reattaching the ballpoint to contemplation of Ana, I idle, applying pressure to unlined paper as I search for the simple things we share; what I find seems unfounded: not in our hearts, or whatever it is that feels, but created in our heads, memories of who we thought we were. I watch her there, in the back of my mind, a rotisserie image, my slow-cooking thoughtform. I turn to thoughts of Hodge and Brís as I play their flashbacks, pausing over one in which he lifts her by the underarms and spins her around. “The carousel!” I say, witnessing a glimpse out of carnival. The a-ha flashbulbs me and I’m inside myself until the deluge recedes, feeling like puddles of muddied water after a heavy rain. My schematic fully formed, I preserve it inside a mental chamber, descending a spiral stairwell into a basement of waterlogged drywall, its ceiling popcorned by a moldy drip. Cubical surfaces run with white lies told for practice, written in speech bubbles, which I occasionally browse. As I exit the room, resurfacing, I think on it. They are the true lies I need to train for; not just believing it but the mechanics of deception, what a lie is and how a good liar tells it. Rapping on the journal, I promise myself: “I will lie to Ana.” Practicing, I say: “I did not fuck Hannah Warlock.”

. . .

Hodge wants ice cream, and Leopold’s has the best flavors. “I wonder if they have Honey Almond,” I say, walking down Abercorn. “I prefer Tutti-Frutti,” says Hodge. “Are you amped and wired for the funfair? I’m glitching! I believe the stimulus of anticipatory play overexcites the capacity of my motherboard because I’m ing our impending sense of adventure

with fiber-optic excitation, but I can wait. I upgraded my autoregulatory skills and now I’m a whiz at self-programming.” “You’re not a computer,” I say, yawning. “And I’m not sure if I’m going.” “You should sleep first,” he says. “I’ll ,” I say. “I live more in less time.” “Your logic is specious. When you don’t sleep, you live less well more of the time.” “I would if I could,” I say, “but the brain is a pharmacy and my mind is on drugs.” Hodge lectures on power sleep. “Prescription drugs,” I add. “Pharmaceutical and illicit drugs. It’s carnivalesque —which is why I’ll come tonight if you return with me tomorrow, just the two of us.” “Digital!” says Hodge. “Second helpings of fun.” “But there’s a catch,” I say. “Tomorrow you have to man a posterboard that reads One Free Bear Hug, and hug anyone who approaches you, except children.” “Children love hugs,” he says. And speaking inwardly, suspicious of a nefarious venture, says: “You’re implicating me in another random act of mischief.” “It’s been awhile, but yes,” I say. “You’ll pickpocket each person you hug. Once you secure their money, you’ll announce that they were pickpocketed and tiptoe around them, holding the loot high above their reach, cooing: Bear gonna getcha, bear gonna getcha!” Hodge is blankly horrified. “I’m kidding!” I say. “You’re bearhugging, and you’ll award each bearhugged person a Proof of Bear Hug ticket. The first is free, but each subsequent bear hug costs twenty-five dollars. Men, women, and children will line up for you, but not right off, I don’t think—carnival isn’t the venue for hugs.”

“Children need hugs,” he says. “Fine, if it means you’ll cooperate then children can have hugs too, but under no circumstances do you award them tickets.” “James,” he says. “What defect in human nature do you want me to realize?” “Human nature,” I say. “But no, there’s no defect I want you to realize so much as the realization that you need to defect. Which is why tomorrow you’re hugging between five and eight, and you’ll tell people to hold on to their tickets, because at nine, when the environment is more inebriated, I’ll appear with my own sign that reads: Beat Me to the Punch in bold, black letters. Underneath, in fine print, it reads: One free punch above the waist with each Proof of Bear Hug ticket. Proof of Bear Hug ticket required for first . Each supplementary punch requires additional Proof of Bear Hug ticket or costs the following: Headshot: $50. Body Shot: $25. Nut Shot: Free with the purchase of $200 worth of violence. Your Ticket Punched: Priceless.” “You understand, then?” I ask. “You’re giving hugs and I’m taking punches. Before they punch me, they have to hug you.” “Why are you soliciting s to physically abuse you?” “It’s people,” I say. “Get the punch line?” “Who punches their tickets?” he asks. “Death.” “The grim reaper?” “Yes, Hodgepodge.” “James, why are you laughing?” “Because life is a joke.” “I don’t get it,” he says. “If life is a joke then death is the punch line. You either get it or you don’t. I

mean, everyone gets death, but not everyone gets it.” “Hmm,” I say, pulling at the bottom lip. “I think I’ll include another purchase option: Pack-a-Punch Vulgarities.” With the index fingers, I caption parenthetical aerials: “(To get you fired up: One dollar per expletive. Three dollars per phrase).” “Is this a wager between good and evil?” asks Hodge. “No, it’s not about right and wrong. I don’t pledge myself to an outcome.” “Is victory based on our respective monetary incomes?” he asks. “Comparing revenues will generate a biased report on human nature.” “It’s not about the money.” “What is it about?” he asks. “It’s about survival. It’s and them. It’s about rolling with the punches.” In the course of our conversation, we forget about ice cream, and carnival with Mother comes and goes. We navigate the fairgrounds and ride the Ferris wheel; big and as structurally empty as a spider web. Hodge eats turkey legs with funnel cakes, and I sip on a questionably purchased carbonated beverage; homemade, ginger-based, quelling the nausea.

. . . J13

We drive to the outskirts and park in the event lot. “I have a frequently asked question,” says Hodge. “What if you’re wrong?” “It’s highly doubtful,” I say, “but you’re right. Maybe no one will hit me. Or maybe an unforeseen determinism could skewer the stakes. Maybe we’re both wrong.” Walking abreast through rows of automobiles, I run a nail along the rear ends of

each vehicle, over the waxy metallic paints. “Why do you hate crowds?” he asks. “To speak your language, crowds slashdot my website with an overload of page views.” “Fiber-optic parallel,” he says. “Do you hate crowds because you hate people?” “I don’t know.” “People aren’t computational,” he says. “You can’t hate them for human things.” “Human things,” I mutter. “James, why am I bearhugging people?”⁴⁴ “Because you’re good at it,” I say. “Because you’ll sweep them off their feet.” Hodge raps his fingers on his posterboard, a white three-by-five inscribed with bold, black font. The sign neglects to indicate the cost of additional bear hugs. It is pure and uncomplicated, black and white. Anyways, who would ask for a second helping of Hodge’s unbearable goodness? I walk with a shepherd’s staff, knotted oak, tapered to a dull stake. Beat Me to the Punch is applied, thickly red, to a quarter sheet of plywood nailed to the staff’s crook; the fine print is written in the etchings of a wood burning tool. “Authorities will arrest you,” says Hodge. “Where do you think we are?” I ask, laughing. “But suppose you and I count amongst the few who can’t be bought, discounting the fact that our principles are priceless for divergent reasons. Here, we, the few, will find the many in between. The many, who plant their feet, who operate on standby, will do what the many do: what they’re told.” “How do you know?” he asks. “Because women will stand on the sidelines with their hands to their mouths, or blindfolding their children, and the men will be mine—entertaining themselves with bloodlust or horror. Some will wrestle themselves, but unwilling to

intervene, will fail to muster the feeling in their chests that catches in their throats; and when they call the authorities—if they manage that—Johnny, the illusive carnie, will reveal himself and announce that they are my showgoers and I am their entertainment. Their hands will fall from their mouths. Their arms will dangle at their sides. Their jaws will unclench gapingly and they will see what they are shown; then, blow after blow, they will expectorate their souls. The men will raise up their fists, and their mouths will dance with hoots and hollers, while the women move their hands together mouthing oooh’s and ahhh’s, and clap, clap, clap—wilder, ewwh’s and applause.” “You should degauss,” says Hodge. “You program existence with magnetic insanity.” “It’s like they’re watching television,” I say. “Or if the gig is good, going to the movies.” We cross into an arid stretch of rock and dirt. Sun-baked mud pools lie about in shallow depressions. Their surfaces crack like dried skin. It’s a desert garden, dehydrated, where tufts of long grass spot the loam like the diseased flesh of caged animals, and where carpetweeds embroider the topsoil with badly knitted fabric, as if their roots hold the land together. The parched earth crumbles beneath bare feet, and fragments wriggle into the webbing between toes. A pack of stray dogs loiters nearby, taking turns at a bitch in heat. They are mongrels raping in the hot-spell of afterbattle, and with mouth-breathing smiles their tongues flag like standards on a windless field. They convey a placid unintelligence, standing as soldiers around a mongoloid, made whore. Almost laughing, coughing, half-desensitized, I retch in the mouth—too vividly seen; that these things are real—it happens. A dog separates from the pack and moseys next to Hodge, who scratches it behind its ears, mangy, drawn with us like threads to the sight of carnival; it looms up ahead, so that whirligigs of motion spin images at a distance. The senses weave in and out of each other, and I darken like rain clouds, accumulating thoughts too dense for light to shine through. By daylight, carnival looks like woods in late fall; when the oomph has abandoned red and yellow, and all the colorful leaves are anemic with decay; everywhere a wet, translucent brown.

From the perimeter, Hodge weighs, and I measure: the grounds spiral around the carousel. A long row of merchandisers and food stalls cut straight through, separating two alleyways marginalized with carnie booths. High velocity rides blur their wheels-of-fortune, and a chill hangs around the Ferris wheel, cobwebbed, as if the catch of winter is spun in its crossbeams. Funhouses craze with old paint, shades of white stained by the runoff of iron, and darker surfaces freckle like autumn in the sun, greens and browns washed with henna and rust. Walls reveal sections of infrastructure, reminiscent of toy dinosaurs with open patches of muscle and bone showing through plastic hides. “Are you spidering?” asks Hodge. “I am. We could be Web crawlers.” I smile to myself. “Hodgepodge, choicest fool—whatever happens, don’t interfere.” And we come like hunters to an open field, ing deer and rabbits, surveying for game. Hodge stations himself by the carousel and I reconnoiter from a fissure between two booths. People are hesitant. No one is sure if he wants a hug. Johnny mans the carousel, dressed in a beige button-up tucked into plaid tros loose about his waist. Beside him stands Bami, one-hipped, picking at his cuticles. “I am no beast,” I mouth. “Be as I am not.” He scowls and averts his gaze. Mother interlards the crowd, tall and thin, breezing through in a warm blue dress. Wearing a wide-brim straw hat, black, that throws a shadow over crepuscular eyes, she irradiates dusk, cut with a pink girdle. She has the look of timely irrelevance, the expression of which I vaguely recognize, as if content in a world of interior design. I feel as if I know that world from somewhere, that some informer, years ago, had told me a story of it—the type you turn over in your thoughts because it feels like you’re missing something. Carnies solicit her and catcall, but she does not move for them, and walks by in unaware confidence—oblivious of Hodge, but inattentively observing a polkadotted dwarf. His eyelids widen into waxing-gibbous moons and he addresses her with the slanguage of love. His verses run warped but romantic, Mother standing over him, unwittingly penetrative; she smiles gently when she re herself, and bends at her waist, kissing the dwarf lightly on the brow.

With arrowheaded lips she pierces his heart, a chain notched to the fletching; so that when she goes he follows her, not stalkingly, but dragged along like a dead puppy on a leash. “Hey, Dopey,” calls Bami, swooping in and picking him up, singing “Heigh-Ho” as he underarms the dwarf to a large wastebin. “Mine,” he says, putting a lid on it, but naturally the dwarf protests. “Dopey,” Bami warns. “Don’t make me sing ‘Bluddle-Uddle-Um Dum.’” Meanwhile, Hodge stands alone, his hair a grizzly red and golden brown, sporting his sign and advocating hugs; people watch him from lines, suspicious of his immensity; that his arms are as long and thickly muscled as heavy-bodied snakes; that he would asphyxiate and crush them. Yes, he could deflate their corpses and strew them like balloons. Setting events in motion, I cut through a scene of bystanders and loudly request a free bear hug. Hodge’s smile shrivels me, and I truncate our embrace, turning to go, but the dog yelps and Hodge stands there—stupidly good—holding out a Proof of Bear Hug ticket. “I love you James,” he says. Children ambush him, as jumpy as bloodhounds barking up a tree trunk, baying for hugs. Their mother calls them off, but Hodge laughs and jokes and says she can have one too, winning her like a large stuffed animal at a game stall. She praises him with psalms and flatteries, that he is saintlike beautiful, while schoolgirls giggle and crowd about in semicircles. Older boys look to one another, unsure, straightening their backs when they ask him for hugs. He’s playing the game. Goodness is the best deception. Hodge beckons from the crowd an unassuming man and manhandles him; as the man escapes, once bearhugged, his smile carries over like an afterthought, slinking off with hands in pockets. I watch for the moment he catches himself smiling alone, reddening, mashing his face into wiped-down emptiness, glancing at persons who might think something.

A little girl in a white dress with blue flowers runs to Hodge. She wraps her arms around his calf, standing on his foot, two or three years old; he raises his leg, pretending to shake her off with slight librations, but the little girl headshakes vigorously, squeezing tighter. She snuggles her face into the muscled groove above his knee, far-off grinning, as if she’s tucked in bed and Hodge is reading her a story. Tossing the sign aside, he picks her up and bearhugs her—how he loves that little girl, fragile and swaddled in his bear paws. She throws her arms tightly around his neck, as if fashioning for him a chain and locket, promising she isn’t ever letting go. Coy and flirtatious, her mother apologizes and takes a photo, chatting up Hodge while her daughter rubs her nose into his neck; when he hands her over, he awards her a ticket. It’s lost upon me: the sky, the earth, the little girl in the white dress with blue flowers; but I clock out and observe the frondescent quality of carnival at dusk— vegetation boom—when lights bloom into flowers to the flesh-out of spring. Night lightens the mood. The candle bulbs stud the rides like nuts and bolts, brittle-glass flames embroidering the black with dazzling strokes of whir. Migrating down the alley and into the periphery, I lay out the traditional garments of the court jester: a patchwork frock quilted red and white, colorfaded, hand-sewn, of a low-thread linen; yellow britches with leather straps that lace up the crotch; knee-high tube socks, one red, one white; and a coxcomb— ass’s ears and tail—pierced with jingle bells. Outfitted in Johnny’s foolswear, I dig the staff into the ground.⁴⁵ I heckle carnivalgoers the way winter trees whisper at a stranger in their woods; whistle, hush, creak, adopting an unassuming air when looked upon: I become branches on a dark, frozen night, or summer leaves rustling when the songbirds go quiet; miming out the pinups of a mangleskinned anatomy, I ensnare the curiosity of a man with nothing in his eyes. Searchingly, he attends carnival by some quest for perversity, but I am here to give him something more, to take from him the context of his wildest imaginings. “It is a trick, yes?” he asks, reading the sign, gloating that he sees through me. “Society is a system of consequences that can accept, reject, use, elude, or defy. I am no such member, and here, there is no such system. My hand on

this stake claims this plot of grass. Enter my world. Feel free to explore.” The mousy man hesitates. He marches to a carnie booth, about-faces, returns. He pauses, flexes, but swinging, he flinches and jumps away. “But you’re going to hit me. You’ll hit back!” “No,” I say. “My world is a hypothetical reality where your actions are subject to no reactions but their own. If you hit me, I won’t hit you back. If you walk away, I won’t think of you as ethically oriented. If you punch me, I will hurt you like a brick wall that bloodies your knuckles because I’m a body of matter, but I can’t hurt you like a man, as a matter of mind. There is only you, and I want to see who you are.” The mousy man wickedly grins, but the show doesn’t start till nine, so I don’t ask for a Proof of Bear Hug ticket. He laughs to himself and strikes me in the Adam’s apple. “You didn’t hit back!” he says, chattering to himself as he fumbles for his wallet; it falls like hot-potato, and he pounces on it. When he stands, he is the prerogative of the masses, and hands me sixty dollars. “I want a headshot,” he says, attempting to jig as he visualizes himself a warrior; dancing side-to-side, he lunges, throwing his whole body into it. Neglecting to clench, the jaw moves unnaturally. He backs up, cautious, but I laugh low and hopelessly, so that he exhales and laughs too, chattering like a mastermind over a neat spread of papers. His hands pet each other, and frantic with nervous energy, he attacks his wallet. “I want a stick,” he says, voice shrill, handing me forty dollars. Look at this warrior, I think; his blood-battered smock, hands like grabbing for pigs—all squealing. See the hate in him, his drawn-up lip; who is made of grunts and wretched stabs of movement. He excruciates the pig, cornering it slowly with cleaver in hand, stooped and leering, needing it to fear him, his teeth showing their yellow rot. Slowly I nod and he snickers; excited tremors wrinkle his frail chest as he elopes with his ambition, darting to the forest on the other side of the clearing.

“How he must see himself,” I say, watching him go. “This is his birthright.” A forty-year-old lady swaggers by, haggishly attractive and openly drunk, dangling her beer by the bottleneck. She reads: “Pack a punch vulgar . . . one dollar.” “Per fuck-off,” I say, tracing the remnants of her fading beauty. She leers lewdly inward, reaching for currency. “Call me dirty whore,” she says with a toothy, drunken grin, handing me a nickel. “Dirty whore.” “Go on,” she goads. “Dirty little whore,” I say, narrating a visual, “I’d fuck your brains out till you out, blow a load on your back, and drop some change in my mess. Dirty whore, you’d suck off my pennies and drop them in your cookie jar.” “I’m a dirty whore,” she says, from elsewhere. “Sure,” I intone, in mock-consolation, distracted by a stunt from across the alley. Johnny sits cross-legged in the grass. He removes his oxford button-up and ties his wrists together with the sleeves, extending his hands beggarlike in the alms position. Next to him, a cardboard sign reads: spare some change. People mistake him for a panhandler and toss him quarters, but he says he doesn’t want their coins. They are taken aback. They disapprove of his speech. They want to put the beggar in his place. “Spare your change,” he says, procuring a clipboard with pen and paper. People shake their heads. They ask him what his words mean. He says: “Sign here to change the make-up of the world, or make up the change you sign for—choose freely, the cost is yours!” But the mousy man tramples Johnny’s sign, wielding a two-handed long sword by the shank of a dead log. He reeks of medieval schooldays and pipe dreams

made of hurt. Our warrior is a champion. He is God to this pig. “Do you have a dog?” I ask. “A Maltese, or size-equivalent breed?” “Yes,” he says excitedly. “A mini Pinscher.” “Did you have a Doberman when you were a kid? Or a Rottweiler.” “Two! How did you know?!” he asks. “Your dad loved them?” “Yes, yes, Sonny and Ripper,” he says, nodding vigorously. “Between the three of you, you were the runt, weren’t you?” He waits for it. I say: “Do me like you do your dog.” He snarls and canes me with his big stick, gashing the ear, so that a helical red straddles the jawline. He stands aside and seethe-breathes, feeling better, stepping aside as other men come, big ones who have thrown punches. They bet on who can make me hurt the most, and as I internalize my outcries, they cringe, drawing out oh’s and damn’s and shit! with hands to their mouths. Hear the smart, whetted crack to cheekbone, nose, ribs. Listen to sounds heard from the inside. Feel the give of earth absorb your weight. With blades of green between your knuckles. People stand agape and scatterplot, their tongues dried by opening mouthfuls of stagnant air. They read my sign and wonder what this is. It’ll feel good, one thinks; and he glimpses primeval, shaking off his knuckles. I ask him: “Does a sense of greatness rise and fall?” A well-to-do yeasayer enters the semicircle with his son, four or five. He unzips his overcoat and extracts a long wallet from his inside breast pocket, handing me a crisp, fresh-minted one-dollar bill. He orders a Pack-a-Punch Vulgarity, the

phrase package. “Make it high-brow,” he says, oily-suave, handing me another bill. The son reaches for his father’s hand, but the father ahems with fist to mouth. “You have dingleberries in your pubic hair,” I say. The yeasayer plays at a chuckle. “My wife enjoys the backdoor.” I am narrowed azure—the implication of a smile. He turns serious: “You meant men, of course.” Business lulls and dull throbs come like afterthoughts. Prepared to start the show, I walk up the alleyway, discipled by the mousy man, the beautiful hag and several rednecks. Bami climbs a drop rod and sits atop the carousel. His eyes are sapphires set in deep hollows. I lean the sign against a prop rail and the mousy man hoots and hollers, cajoling people to punch me. Women gather; horrified, shocked, pleading, but Johnny parts the crowd like a knight’s herald and promulgates the act. Crowds gather; people with eyeballs that flit about their sockets. They behold me like David because I have no shame, and I am suddenly urged to disrobe and dance naked, unabashed and bleeding, shameless as a child; to laugh and jump amongst the peoples. But I am not a king, and mothers would scoop up their children and point their fingers and cry, “Crazy,” the while waiting for the whitecoats; rocking, blackened, nude, muttering: crazy. “One free punch with Proof of Bear Hug ticket!” Johnny says. People scalp their tickets. The esophagus burns with social dyspepsia, and I clear the throat, coughing out the epiglottal inhalation of red. A man digs his thumbnails into his fingerprints before he turns me off— momentary blackout—coming-to with fingers inch-worming the dirt, feeling for my senses. I talk out worlds, spinning, sifting through masks skinned from peoples’ faces, displayed in the aisles of a variety store. Directing Johnny to continue, I stand, and he tells them this is a magic show. I am an illusionist. I fall to dramatize our play.

“See!” he says, pointing to the carousel. “What goes around comes around.” Brandishing the staff, Johnny hawks and sparrows, swinging at their chests; the sign combusts with fire and he swashes at them daringly, a motion that wards off wild animals, but taunts the beast. He spins round, and as he swipes at me, a metallic swish guillotines the air, cutting short the mob and its breaths. The quiet is punctuated with guttural stops, and the drop of a decapitated head rolls to their feet like a wobbly wheel. People horror-show. A squeamish vomits. The magical head is cast in my image, peachy and dragging reds—cut with a Cheshire grin, godhead carved into its brow. The crowd oscillates their mug shots between me and the beheaded, peering deeply into its en tremblant eyes, unable to believe they aren’t mine. “He deceives you!” Johnny cries, pointing at me. “Dub him trickster! Christen him fool!” I psych myself up, out as a gorgeous young man hands me his ticket. I do not feel him but for the trickle of lines down the corner of the mouth, backhanding them to paint the face with red brushstrokes. In the crowd stands the little girl with the white dress, watching blindly, ticket loosely drooping from her flowergirl fingers. The young man plucks her ticket, crumples it up and flicks it at me, asking if I him. “I do,” I say. “Narcissus and the Chimps, wasn’t it?” He rains down his fist and I bend the knees to a cloudlet of dust, convincing myself that I feel him as he feels me, deadened but for the internal horripilation of electric gooseflesh. “Can we go home now?” asks Hodge, helping me up. “No,” I say, rising, clenching my Proof of Bear Hug ticket. Sharing a moment, we watch the amusements, how the rides spray light. Picking up the little girl’s crumpled ticket, I crouch down and return it to her. “No one takes this from you.” She makes to hug me but I palm her skull. “Hug time is over, okay?” “Ok,” she says, suckling her underlip as I thumb a tear from her cheek, kissing it.

A big, boisterous man dressed in a camouflage vest and orange hunter cap approaches, brandishing a ticket. This man has bearhugged the Bearhugger. I hear the popping in their spinal columns and I suggest a vulgarity, insulting him. “It’s on the house,” I say, stoking his fire so that he crazes with veins much like the hairline cracks in crocodile skin. Hodge blocks his progress and the crowd beholds a boy with a halo—crowned, it stains his hair gold. The big man rabble-rouses and people jeer; they want to be amused. “Let them come,” I tell Hodge. “They will come.” “It’s time to switch s,” says Hodge, and he stands there like a saint. Stupidly good. Showing off his halo. Run, I say, but they call him by name and he steps outside of me; innocent, feeling for people a terrible sensation, embracing them, his self-ruinous love. Hodge, I mouth—sounding out: “Oh,” as the big man clocks him in the temple and he falls backwards. Voices jumble and I spin round and a light goes out inside the brain. The dog whines and licks at the Bearhugger’s face, yelping as someone kicks it, while I reach for what could have been, diffluent, watching dreams flock and take flight. I chin-bob, fighting to stay afloat as I laughshake with almost-cry. The chest quakes with dry-heaving tears, some sort of fullbodied, anhydrous sob, before I submerge and roll over. My God, I say, rocking him, choking on the red of drowned innocence. Hodgepodge, I thought I knew . . . so sorry . . . I thought I knew everything. I clench my Proof of Bear Hug ticket and stand, telling the big man he hits homoerotically; I don’t charge for love taps, but if he’s done flirting please allow batter-up to take home plate, because blowjob isn’t on the list of purchase options. Kill me, I imply, staring into him; or I will become what I hate. He cracks his knuckles, looking amongst the people—throng of cornholed mongoloids, their faces blitzed with sparkle and rape. “I hate all of you,” I say.

The head lolls forward, and I whisper: “I hate all of you.” The big man comes but Bami jumps off the carousel. “Uh-aa-uh-aa,” cries his strangled morning song, and when he lands he gives them Rooster: cocksure, unmovable, keen. “You look like you speak sheep,” says Bami, bleating at the man. “Bah-uh-uhuh-uh.” Taking the bait, the big man advances, but as he strikes, Bami crouches, dodges the hook and uppercuts him in the gut, bellowing as he doubles over. Bami stands over him. “Are you familiar with the term: to knock the wind out of?” The big man growls and fights to breathe. “Will the defendant please rise,” Bami says, lifting the man by his throat, and lends an ear. “How do you plead? What’s that? Not so longwinded?” The man sputters—his eyes panic. Dropping him to his knees, Bami handles the man by the fatty underbelly of his chin, gazing deeply before he backhands him. The man drools blood and Bami spits, dropping into a squat, unsmiling, bobbing on the balls of his feet. He flits a throwing dagger between the man’s eyes, twirling it about to glean his attention. “That there is my brother,” he tells the big man, pointing to me. Bami stands and faces the crowd. “This is what we do to sheep,” he says, working nails into the man’s scalp, tenderly, a scratch massage, then pulling tautly to shear him. He holds out his palm and offers hairs to the wind. The people bristle, and he toe-rolls the godhead and kicks it up, juggling it from hand to hand. “Don’t lose your head,” he says, tossing it to the crowd. Turning to the man, Bami lifts his chin with the dagger, still bowed on his knees. “I grant you one minute to live,” he says. “Rise, I will fell you. Run, my knife will fly. Roost, and I will cut your throat with coolest indifference. Your life is mine and I’ll take it. Smile for the camera, big man, because you are the star of my murder scene.”

The man blubbers, and stammers red spittle, so that Bami crouches eye-level and says: “Don’t cry, or I’ll eat you like sushi.” As he stands, a blitzer takes him by onslaught. “Rewind,” Bami says, stomping the blitzer square in the chest, back into the crowd. He points the dagger and says: “Fast-forward.” But the blitzer dissolves into the mob, so Bami laughs and bleats, choppy, guttural—naming everyone lambs. He turns to me and winks. “What’s Greek for deus ex machina?” Headshaking, I say: “Fuck off, Rooster. You’re not my savior.” “Come on, evil laugh minute,” he says. “We’ll play god to this machine.” “No,” I say, reinserting the earbuds—earplugs on low. Bami’s smile capsizes. “Laugh with me.” “No,” I repeat quietly. His eyes dress my wounds, and with frightful tears he feasts them on the mob. “Who’s here to play slaughter?” The crowd birdbrains him with its beady eyes. “What is this, an animal farm?” he asks them. “All right you livestock, let’s play sing-a-long.” He goes through a few rounds of Old Macdonald, pointing out pigs, cows, poultry. “And on that farm he had a butcher, EE-I-EE-I-O!” Bami wreaks into carnival, and I exit through the desert garden, Hodgeless, listening to the laughters of Rooster toying with the beast. The slough of footfalls leads the way, and I strip, so that garments strew along like antipoetic verses. Naked but for the ass’s ears, I cut loose and drive in every direction until, directionless, speeding, I brake on the interstate, skid into the emergency lane and assault my journal. Bami will ruin them, I realize, looking up. He will render them piecemeal.

Watch how they scatter, says a voice. Chickens with their heads cut off.

6599

Dawn waters the Garden with a splash of cold light. Outside, indigo colors the spaces between trees, as if the air is thickly frosted, and the city sleeps, hushed over by an inviolable calm. The deep blue melts through windowpanes and soaks into bedrooms, easy on the light sleepers who toss into their waking turns; and Lafayette stirs, the early risers dormant but collectedly awake, warm and free-thinking in their beds. From the harpsichord bench I compose myself with the feel of this final early morning, fondly watchful, bouncing a thigh into the waist of a guitar. The heels pump and I dance with the instrument, swaying the fretboard as does a singer-songwriter, intimate with his music, singing lowly like an under-the-breath caroler. Red coronets decorate the room, dripped from nostrils, which fleck about as I toss my whispers around. “Hi,” says Ana, standing in the doorway. “I thought you were back.” Interesting, I think, upon seeing her, as activity surges in the scrotum area— spermatozoa jumping for joy, or the groan of machinery when powered on, bracing for increased productivity. “I blew you kisses from the window,” she says. “It’s fine you didn’t notice me. Any-shways, I hacked the new code to your secret lair, so I let myself in.” I continue with the guitar, but glance up. Perhaps mine is a vapid expression. “Oh my God!” she says. “Babe, your face!” “Muggers,” I say. “I was mugged.” “Are you serious? Who would mug you?!” she asks. “Were they gorillas?” “You’re up early,” I say. “I couldn’t sleep,” she says. “I didn’t know you played guitar.” “I don’t,” I say.

“That’s not true. You play very well. Who is this?” “The Garden played it,” I say. “It seems Johnny Cash covered Trent Reznor’s ‘Hurt.’” Ana sits cross-legged on the floor, and I play it from the start. “I can’t understand your mumbles,” she says. “Sing. I know you can.” But halfway through she pales and coldly sweats. “Stop.” “Stop it,” she says. “You’re torturing me!” Her body droops and she slides forward on her knees. “Stop, Babe, please, look at me.” “Baboo?” she asks, tearful. “I love you—it does hurt.” A canvas bag straps across her chest, hanged down at her side, from which she extracts the notebook and rests it on the slope of her thighs. I play on trancelike until I sing the last stanza, strum the last chord; when I look up, Ana returns from far away.⁴ “That was mean,” she says, letting the notebook slip to the floor. “I mean well,” I say. “What is that?” she asks, pointing to an envelope on the desk. “Airplane tickets to Atlanta, then Lima. I fly out this afternoon.” “What?” she asks, and then softly: “Do you want to do something before you leave?” “Sure.” “What?” “I don’t care.” “You better care!”

“I care about doing something,” I say. “I don’t care what it is.” Strangely she inspects me. “What’s different?” Shrugging, I stand, and she follows me into the bedroom, competing with my Vitruvian sprawl across the bedspread; she forks me, winding her legs into mine. “I knew I would have to tell you about Whitey one day,” she says. “I thought five or ten years would be better. Then it wouldn’t matter . . . then I wouldn’t fall from grace.” “Fall from grace,” I muse. “There’s no such thing.” “Yes there is,” she says. “I did. I fell from your grace.” “No,” I say, incredulous. “Grace is eloquence in motion. It manifests as transition. Grace is in how you fall. To fall gracelessly means you weren’t graceful in the first place, but Ana, you were motive eloquence from the moment I saw you. If you did fall, you fell gracefully.” I kiss her on the cheek, holding it there. “What happened with Whitey,” I say, not asking. “The circumstances. The number of times. Drunk. Sober. Why. What. How.” “I can hardly ,” she says. “Probably a few times.” “It was more than once?” “Five times, maybe. We were talking.” And vortical winds hollow out the lungs as eyesight screws inward to the flash of ocular blackout. “What was that?” she asks, propping up on her elbows, peering into me. “What?” I ask. “When I said we were talking . . . your pupils exploded.” “How do you mean?” I ask.

“They exploded. Like black lightning.” “It was a momentary absence of light,” I say. “Or some such similar bullshit.” “I probably saw your soul,” she says, mischievous, mincing. “Wait,” I say. “You were talking as in boyfriend and girlfriend?” As she explains, I move into overcast, to where the sky is clear at its furthest distance. The meteorological finger-painter turntables clouds around a half-rising sun; the atmosphere freshly red and empurpled. The windows are open and a breeze knocks, announcing the drop in of rain, and the fore-scent of stormy weather goosepimples the spine; when the leaves rustle I shiver with the smiling all-overs, listening for the first dribbles of the approaching downpour. Later, sleeping, Ana knuckles up the sheets with her fists, held at her cheekbones as if taking a peek. I’ll miss that, I think, wandering into Lafayette. Water droplets streak down like broken line segments, diagonal, and I rollick in place with the trees, head to sky, relishing the rain-scented air. With nostrils upturned, I become the conductor of lilted memories, until my vision moves me upwards, onto flat rooftops, where the wind churns puddles into ocean spray. Rainwater breadcrumbs trail me through the Garden, to the harpsichord, and sitting there, I court a series of solitary noises by poking at the keys, sequentially one by one, so that by divorcing the married syllables of music, I compose a song by singling out each note.⁴⁷ Sitting on the floor, beside the notebook, I peruse Ana’s entry with cursory shuttles, scanning without reading, too anxious to record what I have to say. But as I write, I reread,N5 sliding it under her pillow and restlessly into bed. The normal positions feel wrong: lying on the stomach with one knee drawn up; or lying on the back with the ankles crossed, rubbing the feet together; and sideways, pillow between the legs; now on the stomach with pillows on the back. I sync my breathing to hers, mirroring her as I watch her dreams draw her faces; to feel what she feels, think what she thinks. Ana wakes and caresses me, applying pressure where she strokes her thumb against the cheekbone. Her touch is sheer wonder, and while she reckons with love, I toss in and out of sleep, vaguely aware of her watching me; when she discovers the notebook, she peels back the covers quietly and glides off the

mattress, slipping her hand in mine when she returns. “Did you kiss Hannah Warlock?” she asks. “I don’t want to pry because I trust you, but Laney said you two snuck off that night you didn’t sleep with me, ? What happened? Why are you different now?” She says: “Baboo, tell me what’s wrong. Will you?” I laugh to myself, close-mouthed, hopelessly amused. “You should figure that out for yourself. Ask our friends if we kissed. Listen to them lie, knowing they are lying.” Her chest expands sharply, but she exhales slowly, congealing with sang-froid. She strains with reason and restraint, and as her fists unfurl with an arresting calm, I flip over and grip her face, jawboned, looking into her eyes. “Yes, I kissed her.” “Is that it?” she asks. I nod, and she fights me, loves me, ripping at our clothes, to which I throw her down and flatten her legs, sluicing up her skirt; hateful—inside her like an animal. “There’s no air,” she says. And when it’s done, she laughs. “I fucking love your ass.” I roll off naked. The socks are sweat-stained. “That was fun,” she says, moving into me. “That was a hate fuck,” I say. “We had sex.” “Obvi—” “No, Hannah,” I say. “I had sex with Hannah.” Ana jumps in revulsion, pushing me down flat to make me see her. “You’re lying,” she says, frantic, searching me. “I don’t believe you.” “Am I?” I ask. “I’m a shitty liar, ?”

She jumps out of bed and haphazardly dresses herself. “That bitch,” she says. “She’ll tell me. You didn’t do that . . . that fuck!” “I did that fuck.” “No you couldn’t! You’re trying to hurt me! You’re not capable!” “I am,” I say, no longer laughing. “You are not, I know you. How could you say that? Why do you want to hurt me?” “I could let you believe that this is my devious machination, but I’ve decided not to lie because I want you to believe. I had sex with her because I had to see for myself if I could lie about it; I did, but now I’m telling you the truth. I fucked Hannah Warlock.” “In the cemetery,” I say, throwing in a lie. “On our bench.” Unrecordable moments occur. Things I can’t even as they happen because the mind blacks out and whitewashes the brain. I endure her motions of extreme anguish; paroxysms, then forestlike clearings of numbness, jolted by a shock that comes and goes as belief and disbelief grapple with her insides, wrestling her into knots. There are tears, and hugs that linger long after we cut loose. I cry out to say some things, but stifle my urge—that because I love her in this minute, I love her every second hereafter; that I don’t have to see her to see her, I don’t have to touch her to feel her, I don’t have to smell her to know she is with me; that I could live forever without her and love her no less; that even as I hate her, I love her more; that the more I deceive myself, the clearer I see the motivation behind her lies, and how innocent their beginnings—how confused and young we are. But I can’t and say nothing. There is only our touch, and I wonder after the things of which our bodies speak. Her face, stranded with sweaty clumps of brunette, is the complexion of roseburnt olive; the lamplight charcoals her features, and from the headboard she smolders, angling her brow slightly downward, watching me, her eyes slotting back and forth, looking up to where I pace. “Who are you?” she asks. “Do I even know?”

I consult the notebook and begin to write, but she shoots forward and grabs me by the wrist. The black thing embeds itself in her expression, and as we stare, I see in her the sketch of a fiery, irresistible shadow. “No,” she says, absconding with the notebook, cursing, naming me hateful things. “Thank you,” I say. “That’s what I need—deep-seated truths.” But guttering, she falls off. “Baboo . . . I didn’t mean that.” “You can’t paint a picture of who I am and say that isn’t how you see me.” “Mm-hmm!” she says, to the tune of yes-I-can. Picking her up, I maneuver us to the desk and sit down, spreading open the notebook as she straddles the lap and holds me like a koala bear. Now and again she browbeats me on the shoulder, but otherwise plants her lips. “Babe, another thing, you manipulate what I say,” she says, leaning back. “It’s like you subconsciously change what I’m saying to make it sound worse, or just different. I don’t know why you do, but you have to realize it so you can stop. It’s a defense mechanism you use so if something does go bad you can tell yourself I am this terrible person you created in your mind. Like you always imply that I wouldn’t want to do things with you because I care more about my friends, or make it seem like I don’t like you as much as I do. But by accident you are allowing me to believe I am this person, and it works. You are accidentally driving me insane! You have to stop. Obviously I fuck up, but I’m not a bad person and you need to realize that.” “You’re right,” I say. She likes what she hears, and I repeat: “You’re absolutely right.” I hand her the notebook and she hoists herself onto the desk, sitting there with her feet in the lap. She skims the page in fast, incoherent trembles, while I watch her with what lip-readers must think of babble.N6 “How could I buy that?!” she asks, halfway through. “You are a fucking retard! How could I not think that you wouldn’t love me anymore? How could I know

that wasn’t an intelligent way of stealing the truth from me? How could I know that once I told you, you wouldn’t change your mind? How could I know that?! Nobody thinks like you . . . nobody!” Under her breath, looking down, she says: “It was too good to be true.” She flits between the notebook and me, wanting to hear, not read, what I’ve written. “I hate you,” she says, “I hate you so much.” But she writes, and me after her, reading our entries out loud; once quickly, twice slow.N7 “It’s crazy,” she says. “I feel like you’re controlling me. When you’re mad at me it’s like my world is falling apart. It’s World War III times one million. But in one second all you have to say is that you care and we are back to world peace.” She facepalms and sighs. “When I fight with you I get so exhausted.” And she asks: “Can you not go to Peru. Please, will you not?” “Baboo,” she says. “I’m not happy.” We spend the morning writing notes; sleeping in intervals, or listening to music. I spread out on the stomach, and she crawls on top of me, lying down. “I love when you do that,” I say. “Mm-hmm. I know you do.” She kisses me on the neck, below the ear, and without warning odors : her breath, our sweat, and the taste of skins recently lathered with aromatic soap, the balmy residue of her shampoo; breathing in these smells, they take me to the moments that make us who we are. “Can you take me to the airport?” “Will do,” she says, looking around. “Did you pack?” “Shit,” I say, dimly aware of blankface. I jump up and spin about, the room an enemy to contend with, take from, to boil

down and skim the fat off. I slam the backpack on the desk and Ana takes the comforter by its ends and unruffles it with billows of air, laying it down slow so that it lies flat and evenspread on the mattress. In a flurry, I throw her various items and she arranges them on the bed. We inventory what I’m taking: a backpack laden with karabiners, five shirts, two jeans, two shorts, a debit card, my journal, a pen, the schoolbook, and two thousand dollars cash. “Where’d you get those fat stacks?” “The SATs,” I say. “Bami and I set up a test-taking ring last year. A sort of black market. He did it for kicks, making the IDs and all that, but I made a decent profit.” “Then you have money to buy shoes,” she says, adding sandals, boxers, and a caddy full of toiletries. “You need a bigger bag, and more clothes. You’ll be dirty.” “I’ll wash my clothes as often as I wash my hair.” “Christopher,” she says, frowning. “You know how I feel about that.” “But shampoo is chemical,” I say, fright-fingering her. “You know, like evil.” Hovering at the light switch, we inspect the room; I study the National Geographic, thinking: Yes, I’ll take that, as Ana swipes something from the nightstand. “Your St. Christopher necklace,” she says, moving in close, leiing me. “Are you not saying bye to anybody?” “Save goodbyes for the end,” I say, locking the Garden. “Otherwise they aren’t necessary. Time doesn’t get in the way.” In the car, I tell Ana to circle Lafayette, just once or twice, as I tear a page from the notebook. “Speaking of goodbyes, can you give Bami this letter?”N8 “I can do that,” she says, folding it into a thick square. “How long is your layover?”

“A couple hours.” “Will you take your phone?” she asks, handing it to me. “That way you can call me before you go, and if you are super sweet you will leave me a message so I can hear your voice every day forever and ever.” I nod, and hand her a disc. “I made this for you. It’s a compilation of our songs, plus some new ones that make me think of you. I also made an online playlist that we can access and update. The information is written on the cover.” We exit downtown and drive the semibarren Georgia freeway; flat, patched with rundown gas stations and rusted, sandy colors. I read street signs and gaze down perpendicular roads with empty wonder, the filling kind, full of obscure thrills and vague expectations. Waiting out a silence, Ana inserts the disc and I skip backwards to the last song, singing the first lines of “Nineteen” out loud, and together we sing the rest, pulling up to Departures. “Baboo,” she says. “Everything is not ok.” “I don’t think it will be, not for a long time,” I say, holding the backpack in the lap. “If I sound calm and indifferent, I’m not. I’m angry—I just haven’t realized it.” “I know you are,” she says. “We were fools to fall in love.” She chokes on heartbeats and air, quietly crying, and as our silence reconvenes, we sprout phantom feelers; she strokes my deepest thoughts, while I cup, with two hands, her silent bawl, to drink from her fountain.⁴⁸ An officer motions for us to move along, tapping on the windshield, so that Ana jumps. “Just go,” she says, glancing in the rearview mirror. But with a hand massaging the back of her head, bunching, twisting her mane, I pull, and push through to force a kiss. “I love you all ways,” I whisper.

“I love you always,” I say. Standing, the knees crack, and shrugging into the backpack, I lean through the open window. I think to smile but can’t, so she closes her eyes because maybe she can; slowly I backpedal, stepping up on the curb, and when she opens them I roll on the heel, honing in on the double-sliding doors. In their reflection she stands, open-mouthed, the car door closing on her, but nothing tells me to turn round, so the double doors open, and I usher myself inside. “Are you checking bags?” asks the handling agent. “No baggage,” I say. In Atlanta, I transfer terminals, arriving as the gate attendant announces last call for all zones. I rush forward before ing that I’m two hours early, settling back at the tall windows. But it’s not until I’m on the runway, seconds before takeoff, that I the phone and power it on. Ana, it says. It reads: Once you’ve suffered, I can save you. When the plane throttles forward I note the light garroting of throat muscles. The captain announces the estimated time of arrival, and I extract the journal from my backpack, sardined with the National Geographic. An article slips free and situates itself on the lap, a printout, which I fold up and wedge it into the journal’s binding, flipping to the postcarnival entries. Like singing to myself, I read them out loud:

• “At any point in life, when the idea of oneself wanders to its roots, when choices are reconsidered and what-ifs are speculated, one reconsiders the importance of beginnings. He realizes what new beginnings offer and how he handled all his ends; and when thinking about beginnings and endings, he may understand that a beginning in itself is not a beginning at all, but a beginning, middle, and end interwoven into an awful glimpse of wonder, that wonderful mind-fuck of awe.

• In childhood, a boy discovers deceit: the value of a lie, and how to manipulate people; he learns that what goes around comes around and goes around again— but not Hodge. Hodge was the preservation of my innocence; I involved him in my experiment because I loved him, that portion of myself, but I needed him to see the world as it is. I thought that, in this way, when the moment comes that challenges him, that changes him, he would be prepared, and his spirit would not wilt. But it did, because something dies in good people when the bad show them their worldview; because the good believe in ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ and because good people refuse to see the bad until it’s too late. The badness cuts them—that is the overdue eye opener, and that first wound, so deep into life, divides the whole. • “So I sit here, laughing alone. Undead inside. A jest of nature—the ape of God.”

And I whisper as I write:

• “Kill your fool. • “Hodge is dead.”

Epilogue

• “Humankind’s cleverest trick was convincing man that a devil exists outside himself; that the source of evil is not his mentality within, but the brainwork of a foreign entity that pervades everywhere without. Satan is a construct, a concept, an idea within us; in this way, demons, and the sinful creatures that cohabitate with and stalk us, are real: If there was a Lucifer who rollicked in heaven, I was him; if there is a lightbearer, it is I who douse him; and if there will be a devil who rises where the angel fell—rebirthed and igneous—it will be me. • Because Prometheus had the cleverest trick of all. He gave mankind intelligence and called it fire. Did he believe we were capable of wielding it, or sitting back, was he curious—did he ask himself: ‘Will the world burn?’”

Musings, Cadenzas, Pornographies and Philosophical Ramblings

1. How do I know this? I ask myself. A voice replies: When you work up doubt, play make-believe. I nod into the plow of hands through hair, inserting a pair of earbuds: “The Trickster,” by Radiohead. Reality disappears into the remotest regions of deep and imaginative space, and I am taken, by mental transport, to a distance that calls me by name; setting up, at its center, in the labyrinth of its geography, a clearing of unaccustomed earth. 2. Ana repeats herself; she burns with sheets of firelight, but her eyes are moonlit cold, as if it is a freeze beneath her skin that flushes her cheeks. When I glance, she glances with me, frozen startled, internalizing our wildfire. We feel each other out with imaginary limbs, but nothing less than blitzkrieg could articulate the speechless volume of our despair. Self-restraint rapes us, and we endure the sexually symptomatic, resisting not each other, but our paradoxical selves. This a mutiny, I mouth, flustered by the insofar-unindulged. She must feel like other girls—yet . . . something untouchable thrives. Do feelings enhance the sense of touch? Porously we exude the dank, palpable odor of cocooned caterpillars; they emerge as butterflies—their numbers exponential, subject to the countless properties of infinity. They come like the disoriented, stumbling masses, their wings heavy with necessary struggle. Lovers are something of winged insects, I suppose, asking: What are the butterflies, and what happens when they die? Are they fly-winged hormones stirring in our guts, or are they better classified as moths born in darkness, that flock to the lamplight, moving like lunatics with their craze and flutter, that think they’ve found the moon? Looking to Ana, I wonder her thoughts on the subject:

Are they butterflies that swirl in her heart, migrating, growing mad with the idea of love, to be loved, the love of falling in love? Or are they as moths to her— moonstruck, mistaking light bulbs for our lunar satellite. Does the soar of butterflies weigh her down, or does she hover with the uplift of their lightness? And I wonder whether she, too, in such moments, is riddled by moth-eaten logic. Does she ask as I query: What is it to know that butterflies are the feel-good symptoms of the physical-self preparing for fight or flight? That the butterflies are a bodily phenomenon; a biological side effect, some sort of duping mechanism. Or is she subject to that third response, blindly frozen there, like reindeer? The nerves flare up, and I cringe with all-overs. Yes, I think, our bodies are sympathetic to the idea of young love. What is this? I ask, suddenly contrary, suspicious of myself. I do not believe in how I feel. I lean on an elbow as if to say something, but the butterflies spiral upwards and our stare deepens with reflection. They soar through our pupils like bats out a cave, fragmenting midair to the supercollision of particles. Those unscathed— butterflies, moths, bats—swarm the other’s open windows, catching in the cobwebs of our darkest corridors, palpitating—beating like tiny hearts—bloodsucked and emptied by our arachnids. Survivors flee down alleys that run inky and drip with wet, wriggling into our neurological nooks and crannies, where they mix with blacker leeches; love, hate, chief amongst them. Run, says a voice, know only that she is Ana; take nothing with you but the echo of her name. End this, says another; fashion a mast out of wonder-whats and rig it with the sails of what-could-have-been. The wind is your escape. Moments of clarity come and go like the voice in our heads, who tells us stories —because we can’t say where the thoughts come from; who, or what they are. I have a mind, says the brain. Does that make me mental? I am mental, says the mind. The thoughts come to me. They are not my own. Hush, says something deeper; pay attention out there. Ana ruffles her hair to the waft of strawberries; shampoolike pheromones, with

our critters abroad like feelings, and I cringe. “What are butterflies?” I ask. “Hodge, dataflood me.” “Butterflies are volant insects of the order—” “No, not the winged creature, the sensation,” I say. “The phenomenon nominally referred to as butterflies in the stomach is an involuntary biological process by which blood is redistributed from the core to the appendages. The perceptible sensation is presumptively a combination of this redistribution of fluid in addition to the secretion of epinephrine, as well as to the excitability of the enteric nervous system. Arguably subject to and exacerbated by the illusion of love, the phenomenon of butterflies in the stomach is de facto a condition of the sympathetic nervous system.” Yes, I think. Butterflies, like fight or flight. He continues: “As glossophobia invariably ranks top three in the catalogue of American horrors, the butterfly phenomenon is frequently experienced at the onset of public speaking.” “Goddamn, Wiki!” says Brís. 3. Sands wake behind us as we sprint to the car. Adrenaline and the slosh of alcohol, arms pumping, the whisky in one hand and a fist in the other. I wonder after images, what it would be like to hold Ana tightly, intimately, and not run away—to feel the hands in the depressions of her waist, thumbs and indices fitted into the slight indentations of her slimly hourglass figure; lean, sharply cut and linear, yet soft. I wonder what it is to feel the interlock of fingers in the small of her back, pulling her close so that her breasts squish against the chest; what that would be like, and whether she is enough to keep me there, held like that— or do I snap out of it and submit to my unyielding reluctance to forgo autonomy. Belonging to someone is a nauseating prospect, and I think, rather than smothering love in an attempt to own it, why not let it come and go throughout a lifetime, guided by chance until it sticks, until it’s right. Because I know something of me, who I am, and I realize, for an instant— momentarily saddened—that if I don’t change I can’t be everything to her. I can’t be with her, for her, of her; that to be with her is to wither. And I do, I wilt,

and wander wearily, squirming as girls wrap their genes around me. But maybe it is different with Ana; maybe it’s her essence—that immaterial something of hers —earthworming into me; but no, maybe, and more than likely, I’ll dream of her, turn us over, savor the joys, over the sorrows and let it go, never to know her beyond the vivid imaginings of daydreams and nightmare; the taste of her breath, whether her feet curl into each other under the covers. So this my inaugural experience with feelings, I think; just motive energies, of desires unearthed, introducing themselves like harbingers of panic. They break my cherry like an emotional virgin. End it now, or disappoint both of us. Because adjectives such as independent, free-spirited, and footloose are synonyms for selfish. As I run, I rehearse a journal entry dated 6389.J3 The moment es, and I who I am. It’s a glimpse, a knowledge— that such an idea is but a feeling inside; unrealistic, emotions coming in waves of the few and far between. I bite the lip. Some flesh tears in the pounding momentum. 4. The loft doubles in analogue to that of a guard tower, one that hangs from the sky, structurally opposed to the foundation of Babel. Long, rectangular windows slot its walls like those of a military bunker. An occupant, when standing, has three-hundred and sixty degrees of observational viewing, supplied with the opportunity to analyze the activities of socially uninhibited peers; to look upon a sea of rippling expressions, their faces like inkblot tests; drunken, blackened, mercurial. Due to this bunkerlike quality, the Womb is cognominally referred to as the Pillbox, frequently annexed by recreational drug s; secure from the following tresers: whitecoats, orderlies, lizard-peoples, government spies, little green men and other such repeat offenders. The access hatch opens, and looking up, I feel like an aquatic organism watching Eskimos on the ice baiting merpersons with ladders. I think of fire escapes, spyglasses, yo-yo’s. I think of tractor beams, clickers on ballpoint pens and reproductive organs. Lightsabers and fake retractable knives. Someone dangles out his legs, as if dipping his feet in my pond, and I am a curious fish in a school of incurious fishes, all hovering about; I think to nibble at his toes and begin my vertical ascent, via breaststroke, up into the loft, momentarily relapsing into an old imagining in which I have the unique ability to swim through air.

5. Our silence is the pause of something asked but forgotten, suspended by intonation; as if her question mark dangles from hot water pipes, dripping its melt into my sea of possibilities—something, I propose, like tossing petals on a long, slow walk, wondering after answers. 6. Two creatures feel around with the lights turned off. They are our big-eyed children, and Ana’s sits alone, irises whitened over, while mine strikes matches behind the house, discovering that his corneas twinkle. 7. If it’s a match, but not a game, Bami doesn’t play. 8. “But yes,” says Bo. “I strategize as middleman. You are my ends. I play you both.” “But you didn’t introduce me to her as planned,” I say. “You didn’t think I’d talk to her without your motivation, but I did, so now you’re pattern-binging like a blip on the scatterplot, drawing conclusions between you and the other points. You spot Ana and me, a line segment, and think you form a triangle, but you fail to see that you are, in fact, a third wheel in relation to our axle. The point is that, to us, you are pointless. Tracing lines between dots illustrates a connection, but that doesn’t mean it’s there.” Bo Jean navigates, locked on Ana, and I follow the path of our conversation. “To the devil’s defense,” I say, “geometries shape all matter of relationships.” “Forgive me, bricoleur, if my English is inadequate, but you mean manner, no?” “No, I’m loose with language. It gets in the way of what I want to say.” 9. She is unsure what to make of us, whether our touch is solid or illusory; whether we are phantoms here, the stuff of mixing shadows; or if, like this, together, we do, by matter of fact, make up what’s real. Or else these are my thoughts seen in her eyes, as she, in turn, searches me, discovering in mine, her own. By staring, she excavates the source of my animation, and in doing so, reveals, burning at her existential core, a dark and unearthly fire. Her flames do not dineon as do consumers, but dish out as does a producer; as if she is a furnace and the fire is her fuel. Ana, this girl, precocious and womanly—full of life and one

thing more, the quality of which, though elusive, nevertheless informs me that she is amongst the few, the lighted, the being. Then there’s you, says a voice; who, although alive, are a halfway-being, yours a substance that feeds on books, ideas, and dead organic matter. But my feelings aren’t real, I tell myself, turning over these innards, stoking the logical retaliation of rational thought. Still, she looks to me, and her stare is a maze meant to amaze me in her labyrinth; to amaze me like losing myself—found dazed, later, in the fixity of that glare. The mattress, made firm by the sink of our weight, jumps as I test its give, bouncing the head into it to consider its buoyancy—mentally displaced, plastic and air. Flashbulbed by the surprise of some realization, she widens her eyelids, letting out a black thing—the glimpse of an entity confined but uncaged like a stranger in the gates; I think to cast myself to a distance, but the eyeballs are glued to the peepshow of awe, reeled in by the sight of her, like sirens, so that I quaff her wine-dark eyes. Because she drugs me with a strange and lusting fury, so that I become the rapture of oceans, the body peppered with spindrift, as if these lungs are earthquakes and my breaths are tidal waves. When she blinks, the black thing escapes into the collapse of her pupils. 10. Awareness says: “Hello.” “I’m busy,” I say. But awareness says: “Hello.” “I’m busy.” Awareness says: “Something is happening out there.” 11. Here the dreamers reimagine their forms: who reinvent themselves as mercenaries or demigods because they are witnesses to the rise of a winged, mythical creature, Ana, alighted with burn and incandescence; that of a dragon or a phoenix—and these dreamers, self-made conquerors, stand in her shadow, awed, for here is the woman who can give to them worlds.

I exaggerate, I think, grinning, but her voice does turn heads. Hers is the subliminal image of a syringe; spurtive, raised, held in the loose grip of a white plastic glove. Hers is a tone that makes a writer out of a drug addict, turning him onto highs like pens and needles; one that open-mouths ventriloquists so that they dance with their dolls, the dummies, lost to fuck-all uproarious. She wields unheard-of confidence; natural, unassuming, contemptuous of only the arrogant; yet poised by her vain, imioned majesty, as if she possesses an amplifier that qualifies her profound, mocking insolence. Because she is charisma potentiated by dynamism, consuming anything pretentious, and spits it out like silly. 12. I am standing in sunrays looking through the shade; the silhouette of a tree on a hot day. I lie down in it, napping on grassland. The heat is like a warmed blanket laid out in winter, and I am aware of my semiconscious musings, hands behind the head, legs kicked out, ankles crossed. The eyelids blink into a heavy laze, shuttering, watching how lights show when the blinds are closed—thoughts like the vagaries of sublimation, and the surfacing of long-forgotten memories, repressed or simply uned, only to forget again when the eyes reopen— aware, in the first minute of wakefulness, that something loiters like the residue of limbo. It is the awareness that one has been dreaming without knowledge of the dream; and maybe, refreshed, once stretched and standing, to look upon the day from the double of this solitary tree; to laugh, that everything is simple; to think, that there is someone waiting for me to wake up; to sigh, and to seize her; that there is no ruling like the present—and yet, chewing on it, deep down, I know that the present is a gift I have never accepted. It is a jar I can’t open. 13. Later this afternoon, in the bathroom, he reads: The Cock, You have my number. —The ugly girl who did dirty, dirty things to you. 14. Bami winks from across the room. Between us sits Ana, who I contemplate. “No,” I blurt out. “She can’t be perfect because we are imperfect by nature. Someone who resists nature, who insists upon their physical sustainability, soon realizes that perfection is the ultimate state of discontent. It sucks but it’s true.

What I’m not saying is that we shouldn’t perfect ourselves, nor am I saying that everyone is perfect just the way they are, but what I am saying is that perfection is subjectively relative, at least in of human cognition. I mean, God could think we’re perfect in being so imperfect, in that we have to work to better ourselves.” “And what about Kate and Petruchio?” asks Mrs. Ramblin. “Oh, no, I was basically talking about perfection.” “Did you read Act 4?” “No, but I did get superexcited about the Induction and began thinking about plays within plays and before I knew it I was lost in a whirligig of black hole clockwork.” “Refrain from speaking until you have read the material. My class is on literature, not concepts.” “But literature is conceptual,” I say. “You can’t participate when you can’t relate the concepts to material.” “What if what I have to say on the concept of perfection is complementary to what my peers have to say on the material? From the gist of what I’ve gathered, both Kate and Petruchio are wildly entertaining, although I’m not sure who the shrew is. Everyone assumes it’s Kate, but Petruchio is also shrewish. It sounds like they are both shrews who are destined to tame each other, in which case it is two for the taming.” 15. “Let’s see what time it is,” she says, digging through her purse, pulling out a wrist watch and another water bottle. “Shot time!” Our dialogue amasses with drunken vagaries, speaking of the intangible things that make us real, or which, at least, give us the ability to consider the possibility of being real, or unreal, or something subarticulative and totally epigenetic. Or maybe I am alone in these castles because it is in realness that Ana exceeds me —and my expectations; now thinking about the nature of thought and the random firing of neurons, how it’s weird to know things as they happen, to narrate the basic bodily functions as they occur without being entirely sure that

they are actually occurring; that consciousness could be an elaborate hoax. I tickle her and we laugh out loudly, piano fingers dancing in our skulls— laughter like stitches to open wounds, so that our sides are sewn like the tracks we riot on; laughing to laugh, self-sustainable, as if we are digesting ourselves; feeding on air. Leaning back, catching my breath, knuckles absorb the splinter-cracked wood, ashen grey. Ana observes me with the look of a lost but adventurous child, frightened with anxious wonder. Her gaze seems to recall a fond memory; buried —feeding the type of smile that isn’t ed when jogged from daydream, but felt because it lingers in the subconscious musculature; and I, in turn, observe her movements, the slight curl of her fingers, slow, their tips kneading me in the xiphoid process. She puts her head on the chest, and somehow I know she’s listening, lulled by the rise and fall of my breathing; but somehow I startle her and she jumps, as if someone has poked her on the shoulder while lost in thought, and minutes later she is startled again and she looks up, curiously concerned; I look back equally perplexed, before realizing the sudden deep breaths I take, breaths that emerge from the depths they gasp of, that of a waking apnea; because in these moments of forgotten self the brainstem determines breath to be unnecessary, that the other worlds I inhabit do not require breathing as the body is without needs—but then I myself and I inhale like whales after a blowhole, or gunshots in a silence; and the third time, minutes later, Ana rises with the chest like a bird on a wave, floating over the crest, and as it es, falling with the surface. She exhales through her mouth, slightly agape, a rose about to blossom. I look at the sliver between her lips, into the blackness that looms behind caves, and their white-toothed maws. A muscle above her cheekbone twitches like a grimace, but calmly, the way innocence disinters itself by that property of self-forgot. I drift off, and the of the robotic screen actors guild; now filming a train robbery. The cameras roll but the robots confuse me with their humanly features: a little flesh, a little breath and without a reason to exist at all. Their sclera glisten with moisture, and when they breathe, I smell their breaths, moving amongst them. Choo-choo goes the distance, and a robot outlaw nudges me, telling me not to fuck this up; though he speaks mechanically, he sounds more like nerds imitating an artificial intelligence. The choo-choo loudens, closer, someone pulling at the

shirt. “You’re interrupting my train of thought!” I say. 16. It comes to me like a mirage half a mile off. Ana runs up the embankment, but I step forward, smiling curiously: There are such notions of death and none of them are real. The locomotive seduces me with the feel of immortality, swirled in the dregs of hypnagogia. The horn sounds distorted, strangely pitched, as if it is ing through a music synthesizer, and I become Odysseus at the mast, choo-choo like the dreamsoaked sound waves of a siren; but this time I am unrestrained and she reels me in, her verses horrid, beautiful, songful, catchy. As I go to her, this train, my siren, I premagine that she takes me in the feed, ripped limb from limb through island canopies. Afterwards, she lounges in the peaceful lull that follows all senseless acts of violence, seated beneath a date palm, serpent-tonguing chum and flesh from under her nails. She wrings muscle off bone like children istering Indian burns, spilling marrow to dirt as libations for a carnivorous God; he who prefers blood to the offerings of Cain; who would have us believe, as a testament to modernity, that he is a converted vegetarian. I’m going off the rails as I walk them, I think. Imaginary deaths are always painless. It’s glorified imagery, dying in battle, or before thousands of spectators in the mockery of self-sacrifice, dying contemptuous of their salvation. But the mind, however imaginative, cannot comprehend the pain involved. Maybe you hear the screams inside your head, like watching horror on melancholy, but the pain is drowned by the image and the music, and you watch a man hacked to death in the rain of a hatchet backlashing red—your favorite slow song on the radio. For even as I’m about to die, I have to imagine death; that as we collide, the scene dematerializes into wisps of fiction, ball dropping like New Year’s to crimson mist—fragments of bone and brain all confetti in the air, spinning and cutting a million rays of light—everything seen, eyes beaming with stupid awe. 17. “You’ve never seen a star,” I say. “Even on a new moon when the sky is blackest and cosmic blips twinkle like pixie dust, you’ve never seen a star. Not even the sun. What you see is an illusion, like the sunrise. But the illusion isn’t out there in the external world; it’s inside your brain. You can reach and grab for

the sky, and you can watch your hand do this, but your hand as you sense it is in your mind with the trees and the earth and the world. The only reason we’re able to communicate in interactive dimension is because we are genetically constructed to perceive in similar manners. The center of the universe is relative to the observer, and reality has begged the question. “The world of unperceived animation would be wildly indefinite and wonderful to imagine, so ask yourself, can something exist outside its perceived existence? Does color exist outside the eyes that interpret the light? If it doesn’t, then it both exists and doesn’t exist, along with something else. It exists to the perceiver but it doesn’t exist in specie unto itself, and layers of meaning and definitions and semantics are required to parse the proverbial onion. “It’s summarily dumbfounding to think about because there are fundamental possibilities that could skew everything we believe about the universe, which is why I relegate everything to illusion while simultaneously affirming the validity of my perception. Illusions can enlighten in the same way that light can blind. If an illusion makes you think of something in a way that directs you towards a clearer understanding of the subject, then fuck yes for illusions. And although my senses mislead me, I’m never quite disenchanted; reality no less interesting. “Take the moon. The halo around it is due to sunlight reflected off the lunar surface and then refracted through ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. Refraction in this case is the bending of sunlight, redubbed moonlight, as it es through the crystals. The effect would probably be similar to looking at the moon through a magnifying glass. “Knowing that something is illusory doesn’t make the illusion less magical. If you actively perceive with different perspectives, you see things in new lights that beg description. For instance: The moonlight is a silvered blanket laid out on a midsummer’s night, veil-like and silky on our naked skins, or it’s the wavy surface of ocean water casting light-drawn shadows on the seabed. The illusion’s not reality, but how you interpret reality. There are infinite ways to see it and through it, which is one reason why we have no idea what reality is. Which is also why, in a sense, all that can be imagined is an expression of what is real.” In our silence, Ana counts the cost of living by asg a number to each heartbeat, adding lambs to a flock of sheep—chest rising and falling, the lambs like little lion cubs.

“Do you like Tegan and Sara?” she asks. “I haven’t heard of them. They’re a girl band?” “Mm-hmm, what’s your favorite band?” she asks, teasing me. “And why?” “Hmm, my current favorite is Radiohead, and I don’t know why. I could say something hipster, like: Their lyrics define my existence, but I like the music. What’s yours?” “Linkin Park. You could say it’s a guilty pleasure but I don’t feel guilty. But that does not mean you can tell anyone.” She frowns. “Linkin Park is my me-time.” “Weird, I used to love Linkin Park; and Tool and Rage Against the Machine.” We fall off and leaves detach themselves from trees; listlessly, I search for words to describe their motions: lull: for when they fall cradlelike—graceful and rocking; and whiffle: for when they sweep violently and swooshing, so that the leaves catch in swoops of wind—whiffling up and far from their branches, rising until they stall, pausing, and how they lull, oscillating back and forth in their vertical descent to earth. 18. “Mrs. Ramblin wouldn’t be half so bad if it wasn’t for her god-complex,” I say. “She’s invested with this sense of divine authority in which she can’t be wrong because her words are god’s words. And she believes it. God is going to judge us because she says so. She can’t take a subversive joke, and I think she despises me for a couple reasons. One is because I have this irrepressible desire to smile when people get angry; she thinks it’s because I’m a degenerate and I enjoy frustrating her, but it’s actually because I can’t understand why she is so angry, and I find it inherently amusing. I can’t help it. “The second reason is because last year, we had to orate persuasive speeches to the class, taking a stance for or against something. I chose to argue against religion. I said nothing against spirituality or the true teachings of Buddha and Jesus, as I don’t know much about them, but somehow my argument was so convincing that I converted several religious peers into atheists.” “You’re kind of famous for that.” “I am?”

“Rebel. Orator. Atheist. That is pretty much what people told me about you.” “I’m none of those things.” “I agree,” says Ana. “You’re a twinkling star.” I stare off. “Do you believe in God?” I ask. “I’m not sure. I believe in something, but I don’t know what it is.” “Believing is self-explanatory,” I say. “Our brains are wired to believe, but if I did believe in god, I wouldn’t worship him.” “And why’s that?” she says. “According to the Bible, God created man in his image, right?” “Right.” “Okay, say a scientist creates an intelligent species in his image. The species breeds and learns and thrives, and the scientist’s laboratory is their Eden. As their creator, he tells them whatever he wants, dazzling them with the magic of the modern world, such as electricity and radio waves and things they can’t explain. The scientist patents this new life form and displays them to the public. It’s in the news: Scientist Creates Life; Homunculi Call him God. Religious peoples the world over are outraged. This scientist isn’t a God, they say. His creations must know the truth. But I created them, says the scientist. I am their God. He asks the churchgoers: If my creations shouldn’t worship me as their creator, why do you worship God as yours?” “It’s farfetched,” says Ana, “but I see your point.” “Exactly. Like Nietzsche, I can’t harmonize with the idea of a God who constantly wants to be praised. If he wants us to worship him and make sacrifices and revel in his name, and plays favorites, then he’s as vain, psychopathic and immature as any twentieth century dictator. Also, if he gave us free will to test us, then we’re an experiment. Imagining God like religious folks do, I see a narcissistic mad scientist who wants his creatures to do exactly what he says, or a detached observer analyzing our psychologies. The latter maybe, but not the former. If God exists, he is not the creature of religions. God, as we

know him, is the stuff of humankind. “I guess we all have our own gods. For the longest time, mathematics was mine. I mean, math is language, but who can speak it fluently? Not Newton. Not Ramanujan. Definitely not me. Maybe that’s why I’m in this class. Because English can be mastered.” “Why aren’t you in AP Calculus?” asks Ana. “I mean, why would I pretend to learn high school calculus from an instructor to whom I could teach nonlinear differential equations and abstract algebra? Actually no I couldn’t; I’m a terribly impatient teacher. But math can be fun! Read ‘A Note on Piffles’ and its playful rebuke concerning the Piffle Paradox. Highly hilarious. It’s biffles and boffles.” “Umm, ok,” she says. “You want to be a mathematician and a writer?” “I don’t know. I play with math, but I work at writing. The mechanics, at least. While math is more creative, it’s not as subjective, in my opinion, so where my maths will be seen by the other in-sighters who see them, the exactness of my loosely termed word-permutations probably won’t. It’s a sort of literary combinatorics, arranging and rearranging the twenty-six-letter set of our alphabet.” Chewing on it, I ask: “What if the ultimate answer to all our questions was so simple that hindsight made short work of it? We’d say we knew it all along.” “Maybe,” she says. “Do you believe in aliens?” “Definitely. You?” “I bet so. Statistically, it’s obvious. There have to be aliens.” “We could be aliens, even,” I say. “We have no idea who we are or where we come from. It’s improbable, and science fictional, but if there are civilizations older than our own, then our science fiction is most likely their science fact, just as if mankind had a competent understanding of phenomenal behavior, it would seem to less-developed intelloids that we’re possessors of magic. If you think of a wand as a technological instrument, and Harry Potter as born with a selected gene that permits him to use it, then wizardly magic is simply advanced

technophysics.” “You are so out there,” she says; and then: “You know those people who live ahead of their time? I think you’re one of them.” “Sure,” I say, laughing it off. “The future will catch up with me.” “Mm-hmm,” she hums, and I roll the eyes. 19. “Oh, yes, I’m talking to you. I regularly anthropomorphize inanimate objects. Jack, don’t let anyone get you down. You’re a neat guy, straight up, although you are a little cocky. What’s that? My drinking is lowering your spirits? Well, you do look a little out of it, but you still seem quite full of yourself. But you’re right. Before long, you’ll be down and out, just another glass corpse in the recycle bin, but your spirit lives on through me. I want you to know that. You live on through me, Jack. Care for a stog? No? Mind if do? Didn’t think so. I know you, Jack. You only say something when you’re against it; the brooding, silent type. But don’t get the wrong idea when I kiss your bottleneck. What’s that? You think I have a problem? Please, Jack, if I’m a fish then you’re the water. And I’m a fucking fish. You know, I don’t need this right now. Talk to me when you’re sober. No, don’t worry. I won’t get chummy with Parliament. Cig’s cool and all, but he’s a little too cool for my tastes. Besides, he blows smoke. What’s that? Yes, Jack, that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m practicing small talk. “No, time, time is what I’m talking about. Time is bipolar. Time is a vicious circle you can’t wrap your head around. And it’s our most valuable possession. Time is the one thing you can possess but not own, that you can spend without earning. It’s the one thing we quantify that is without quantity, the one thing we qualify that is without quality. Yes, Parliament, time is a social construct. Wait, what’s that? I can’t understand the posh cant of your chitchat. “All righty, guys, prepared to meet and greet? The Garden is chockfull of foreign people. No, not illegal aliens, Parliament, people. If I don’t know you, then you’re foreign. Well, thanks for listening, guys, you got me through the moment. What’s that? No, I’m fine, palsy but far from walsy. Well, to it then, let’s socially reconstruct ourselves.” The big red door swings open. There is dancing and general looseness. Drunk kids slosh beer cans and red plastic cups. Two older girls do lines on the coffee

table like it’s nothing. “I love it,” I say, toasting Jack. “To killing ourselves with a good time.” And walking through peoples, I ask him: “What did I say about getting down on yourself? Something has to fuck you up. Better drugs and alcohol than the real world. Something has to kill you. Better beer, wine, and whisky than fast food, school, and the rest of your life. It’s true, Jack. The rest of your life will kill you. Rich white kids have problems, too. Ha! We have no idea. But it doesn’t matter. We all want to die. There’s solace in thinking so, isn’t there? Just look around. I’m not the only one who’s fucked in the head.” 20. Feral with sexuality her eyes beam like whooping fireballs, branding my vision with the after-image of myopic suns. Because some features are well matched to false compare: her eyes are two where the sun is one, seers that, unlike our star, fuse to earth’s rotation, burning no less by night than day. Their brilliance isn’t the dumb brightness of our sun, blinding, but a light that judges and shines on and perceives what it dumbfounds. 21. Yes, this is a bodily response to drowning; me-the-biological-organism is shaking, but me-the-mind is motionless, floating detachedly, wondering what’s the fuss. The notion is speculative; that this could happen. Once I breathe water, death is painless, thoughtful, something of a daydream, like a drowning in the midday sun. 22. Creative oneironaut, tap your fountainhead. Explore the self-process. 23. Johnny appears out of nowhere. “A fool who speaks too much is wise to hold his tongue,” he says, pinching his tongue: “At ’ay no ’um ’ows uht ee ith ’alking a-ouwp.” He jigs, singing:

“If a wise man speaks his mind And talks his truths into doubles,

And if a fool who holds his tongue Blows his words out like bubbles, What says the wise man to the fool Who takes the wise man by his troubles?”

“What?” I ask. “The wise man says: ’ool! ’et ’o uh ay ’ungue!” says Johnny. “Bo Jean Wilde,” I declare, laughing, “I will make a fool of you, but not before I offer an alternative. Instead of being real with people and not fucking with their heads, I want you to pretend you’re stupid. Fool them. Make people believe you’re stupid.” “Putrefact,” says Bo, spitting. “Act stupid!” I say, donning a lopsided maniacal grin, “It’s contagious.” “People are stupid,” he says. “Me, I am not people. I am not stupid.” “So you’re saying that as smart as you are, you never feel stupid?” “Naturally.” “Interesting, I feel stupid, like, always,” I say, adopting the schoolhouse brogue. “Seriously, though, I feel stupid, which is why I like to act stupid. In pretending that I know less than what I seem to know, it seems to me that I know more of what I don’t know. And other such nonsensical logic.” In a spot of mimicry, Johnny says: “If a man knows he knows nothing, then it seems that he knows something, but if a man who thinks he knows everything, knows nothing, then the man who knows nothing knows one thing more than the man who knows everything.” “Is that how I sound?” I ask.

“If male fishes had male , would a codfish use its codpiece?” he asks. “Silent,” says Bo. “It is true, I know not everything, but who needs to know infinities of useless information? I will not say: Because I am not God, I am stupid.” “Don’t be silly,” I say, sillily. “God is stupid, too. Many a year ago, our God was a delinquent youth in a caravan of intergalactic supergypsies on a pilgrimage to their home star. Feeling libidinous, he took a solitary detour, and, as adolescent boys do, went masturbating through our solar system. Needless to say, God forgot his gym sock and came all over Mother Earth.” “Please, explain, how is it gypsy semen populates a planet?” “God ejaculates babies!” I say. “And three mature adults. Adam and Eve crawled out of the ejaculate like the birth of the Uruk Hai.” “It is clear, actually,” says Bo. “It is not acting stupid if you are stupid.” “Try it!” I say. “Act stupid! Intentionally mispronounce a word, especially in front of someone who fancies himself superior. Listen to him or her correct you —look for it in their eyes. Think of it as an experiment, but say something stupid. Observe the response, knowing that you know you are wrong and that others know you are wrong, the difference being that they don’t know that you know that you are wrong. It is liberating in a sense, especially with someone who is less intelligent. They get this sudden pleasure. “Thinking about it, intelligence simply suggests that you have more ideas about what you don’t know and more awareness about what you don’t understand. So watch someone respond to your fallacious stupidity, and you will know what it’s like for hyperintelligent beings to watch us humans diddle about on Earth. Imagine the world from their point of view: We must look like retards. Look at all these stupid people. Yes, and don’t forget to look at me. What do you see? Me, I see the most fucked-up kind of beautiful. “It’s like this: When you see through everything, when you harmonize all the patterns and pattern all the chaos, and you know how all the stories will end— but still you read as if there’s the possibility that this time you’ll be surprised, that this time you weren’t as clever as you thought you were, you realize that you’ve reasoned yourself out of logic, as if there isn’t enough logic to go around.

Suddenly, the idea of everything, even you, becomes a massive brainteaser. Intuitively, all the contradictions and paradoxes make sense, but you can’t put them into words, so you can’t logically formulate an understanding to what you know—and it’s funny, us logical people. We try to make sense of a reality we can’t possibly make sense of, knowing full well we can’t make sense of it. Thus, we persist in the nonsensical, as the application of logic is fundamentally illogical. Logically, however, I am incapable of believing most of this—that just because I can’t make sense of reality doesn’t mean it can’t be made sense of. “Even if our generation’s cultural shift towards free information via file sharing continues, and you could a torrent of all human knowledge directly into your mind, to become the singularity, intelligently amplified, something incredible would remain elusive—totally beyond your grasp. So say something stupid. See what happens. If you understand me, you will see that you are a fool, and the only logical response to this hopeless realization is to play the fool.” I laugh. “Which brings me back to a certain Tom Thumb who thought he could play me for a fool. Your kiss was a fake out.” 24. He sits them down at the chabudai and does tricks for them, writing a French poem with his left hand and a piece of English flash fiction with his right. The girls crowd about him like wildlife to a watering hole. On the wings of mockearnest lampoonery, I them: “Move it, bitches, let me see. Oh. My. God. It’s French!” A girl says ridiculously: “I know, right?!” Another takes the poem and reads it aloud. “Impressive,” I say. “Are these original pieces?” Bo neglects to demonstrate that he hears me, staring at the girl butchering the French, deliberate in the subtleties of his contempt. The second hand ticks a minute around the clock. “Christophe,” he says. “You are Greece, I am Rome—what is original?” “That’s a good question,” I say. “If a writer makes his words the reader’s only thoughts then he’s a good writer, but if he can make his words haunt a reader, so

that a subconscious dialogue occurs within him, the reader building for himself the writer’s world, then the writer is a creator, even if his work is not original, as creativity is a meme. It diversifies originality. “But at the same time, isn’t a new book original to its first-time reader? Isn’t an age-old idea original to the thinker who independently derives it? For as long as I can , I’ve had my own version of counting sheep at night: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and so on. When I was fifteen, I was daydreaming, playing around with these numbers, when I discovered certain patterns, amongst them an interesting dividend. Upon investigating, I learned these numbers were known as the Fibonacci sequence—a discovery original to me, but not to the world.” “Please, continue,” says Bo, desirous of crushing me, but maintaining his composed effrontery. “Originality, Christophe. Teach me.” I stand, and tread empty space. “Perspectively, if something was ultimately original, it wouldn’t be recognizably human, but outside that, I could tell you anything. I could say that you are a universe unto yourself, a speculative host of cosmic contradiction. You are a paradox, an impossible congregation of ordinary matter expressing the extraordinary headfuck of immaterial perception. Your body results from the biological transmission of genes, but does your mind? Either way, you are your mind, and your mind is a seminal being. Not even you in a past, future or parallel life is this you. On the other hand, I could say that you are not original, that you are a little bit of everyone you know: that your face is drawn with acquired features; that you are a variation of man, one of billions molded to the human organism; that like a book whose author was inspired by a previously written book, and the author of that book inspired by a foregoing masterpiece, you are not an original concept but a link in the chain of conceptual evolution. “I see you, Bo Jean. You need to be original. You want me to tell you that even though you are nothing more than a singular host of variegated genes, still, you are original. Because your life is a story and you want me to read you like a book. Isn’t that right? All anyone wants is to be read like a page-turner—opened, flipped through, enjoyed. People want to be connected with, used, loved, if only privately by an exclusive person or set of people. We want to be read like books because we write ourselves like books; narratives of character, theme, plot. And we read ourselves, too, what we’ve written in our minds. I’ll it it: everything I do, I do purposefully, and most of it on a whim: every word, mistake, facial

expression. Because I am writing the script to my cinematic dreams, planting clues here and there, thinking in the grand scheme without any plans for the moment; that all the tidbits I include, germane to the telling of an epic, and the literary nooks and crannies and the subtleties that validate the intents, it all has meaning, as if here inside the head, all the details compose a saga that I want people to pick up on. “It’s like I am seated at the center of the earth and the entire world is inverted inwards, everyone seated inside this sphere and watching me, this man, their focal point; and it is as if every person is keen on the little things this man does, that, to him, have tremendous significance: the symbols placed in casual conversation, the puns, the way he speaks in layers. I do these things and I would have you read me like a book; not a pleasure read, no, not mindlessly enjoyed— that’s nice, but I want to be understood in-depth; because deeper than my want to be unknown is my need to be experienced: not the person you see here, but my mind; to be known without anyone knowing who I am—to be known intimately, like anonymous. “We are all something literary; shining our words onto people with our overhead projectors, their mug shots scrawling with descriptions of what we think of them in the moment. I know this because I read you like literature, which may or may not be what you have written for yourself. My reading of you is like food, or water, and I hunger and thirst to capture you, consume you, with words that structure the ideas within, to be concise and precise but most of all accurate; and as I write you down, I look in your eyes for those words found in books that excite a reader because he has thought them in similar patterns, so that he says: Yes! This is my voice, these are my thoughts! “Bo Jean, you’re a book and I’m a book and we compete to have ourselves read like books, by the intelligent reader who is appreciative of the subtle, clever things that wind up in our narratives—all of this as if the novel isn’t dead. As if we aren’t all dead.” Laughingly, I sigh. “But I am dead. The novel is dead. There is nothing original. And still I would have the world read me like fiction; this moment, these words, a chapter in my memoir.” And I say: “Girls, beware of boys who live like books. All autobiographies are fiction. Do not buy our stories—spend your time on your own.”

“Bravo!” says Bo. “What insights! So young with such vocabulary! Bow, girls, he is original, and as beautiful as words, no? Girls! Our man is original!” Bo Jean tears his papers from them and rips them into pieces. They rain down to the feel of a silent lullaby. “But yes, you are quite contradictory,” he says. “‘You do not conceive the original. The original conceives you.’ Your words, no? You are not believer of God, but it is one week since you say: ‘If God was to ask a creative person a rhetorical question, he would ask: You believe in what you create, but does what you create believe in you?’” “You’re right,” I say. “I contradict myself because I see it from every side: this and that, this or that, neither this nor that. I can think so far as to outline reality’s contradictions, but I can’t comprehend the process of their synthesis. The cosmos is a paradox, but only in human . Again, I’ll say: The contradictions make sense, but we don’t know how to make sense of them.” “Encrypted!” exclaims Hodge, popping in; he listens, intrigued, howerver aware of man’s honeycomb logic—that the mind is sweet but full of cavities. I take gin like a tall shot and chase it with a mouthful of wine, sloshing it through the teeth—a habit, swishing liquids around the gums. The girls chatter amongst themselves, as if ideas do not take them, when a voice says: You can’t change a world that doesn’t want you. Bami or Bo is talking and I become the spontaneity of self-directed loathing, seized by the insanity of self-sedition, spinning circles so that I fall back and there’s the Womb above and I think that is where I need to be, when Bami’s voice comes to me: Where you live in prisms, I live out rainbows. 25. You get the picture, says a voice, but another says: Photography, like the propagation of parallel identities in virtual realities, i.e. the human predisposition towards personal reinvention exacerbated by social networking sites and ed cyber-selves. 26. “How do you think?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. “I’ll psychoanalyze you.” “I’ve tried to explain thinking before, but I couldn’t, so I’ll explain why I can’t

explain. It’s like the tip of my tongue is the visible portion of an iceberg; what I think to say exists as an underwater mental image, but what I articulate is a fiddle of bubbles. I want to pull you beneath the surface so you can see the enormity of what I imply, but I can’t. I can’t take you inside my head. I can’t show you the rest of the iceberg. On the outside I might be quiet, but inside I’m soaring with ideas and drowning in thoughts and everything comes together in a raw, intuitive high.” “I know what you mean,” she says. “Now explain how you think. You can do it if you try.” “Okay, metacognition,” I say. “I guess I’m emptily perceiving until an idea triggers mindfulness. Then I generate possibilities of what could come out of that one idea, simulating multiple scenarios, so that my thought pattern looks like trees with branches going out on limbs. Next, I take all those possibilities and scatterplot them, jumping around, connecting the dots where no connections seem linearly plausible, until the patterns converge into a unified idea representing that singular tree. Finally, I gather my previous trees and see how they collaborate, actively creating a woody ecosystem of sorts, where I connect the dots in the hypothetical space of what could be, or pave multiple avenues to arrive at a single destination within or outside of the jungle. During all of this, I’m wondering where the ideas come from, how I thought of that.” “I want your mind,” says Ana. “I want it so bad.” “No you don’t,” I say, flatly. “Sometimes I think I see the world from so many perspectives that I couldn’t possibly be one person; that, instead, I’m this masquerade of people inside me, a mob of one, everyone fighting to show his face—everything insane, everything godlike—the while knowing I’m not God, but fleetingly human, so that, rebootively, in the wake of an ego-destructive tsunami, I feel insuperably stupid.” 27. We move into fast and muscled flesh that rhythmically claps. “Stop,” I whisper. Kids ferret through the woods. “I’ll show the little monsters,” she mutters, dripping sweat in our igloo. “Little child,” says Ana, croaking, pretending to claw at and eat me. “How tasty you are.”

“You’re not eating him!” says a girl’s voice. Ana sluices red off the penis, and I cringe, somehow laughing—that this is too much. “Come to me, child,” she says, reaching her bloody hand out. “I want to taste your bones.” The children are not sure if they see what they’re seeing. Break; curdle; howl; flee. “That’ll show them,” she says, swiping her hands together. “I can tell you want kids,” I say. “There is not a prayer in hell!” And she says: “I love kids, but I will not have children.” We lie down together, and I wear the sudden expression of finding myself in a foreign pair of eyes; that she can see me, touch me, taste me; that she can hear the things I say to her, smell me in her bed, on her pillows. I see this girl; we’ve spoken, kissed, dreamed. But have I seen her the way she sees me, through me? The expression lifts and mine becomes the face of something found. I familiarize myself with her movements, responsive to her faintest twangs of pleasure; observantly, I pluck the strings that play her tune, attentive to twitches like chords that sound out vibrations; the exhalation of wind instruments, and some sort of multiphonic cunnilingus. I note each strain, picking at our melody to the strumming of our parts. It’s humid like the tropics. Our igloo falls to a breeze washing over us, and inhales as we rise. She’s on top, and her hair walks the skin to the tiptoeing of insects, and then it is a great mopping mane. She calls out and pushes me flat, fingernails unaware of their penetration. She shudders a summons to crescendo: fit of contractions, contortions, the freeze; and there is her half-laugh, and as she exhales, her chest falls to mine. “You’re my favorite,” she says. 28. Bystanding, I compose his thoughts: Brís thinks I’m hot. What does hot

mean? Who does Brís see? Me or my face? Am I am a singularity devising computational algorithms to simulate human behavior in theoretical protohuman life forms, or am I a prototypical specimen of highly desirable genetic information? If I am the interior, who is the exterior? He is my look-alike, but I look nothing like him. I am in love with Brís, but Brís is in love with my impostor. 29. From the Portuguese, saudade. 30. Something’s happened, I realize. But I mull it over. No, something definitely happened. What changed? I kissed a girl. That’s when it changed. But I told her I would tell her. She said it was fine; it just took her by surprise. I follow Ana’s gaze through the dry wall. She turns on the stereo with a remote, and wormholes string me to different memories, as if strung on a lei. Flashbacks wreathe around a mental laurel, and I glimpse every place I’ve heard this song; once on a particularly clairvoyant drive, thinking over the choices I’ve made; then standing on a rock in the shallows of a lake, listening with the earbuds sprouting out orifices; and seemingly unrelated things: a kiss seen on the big screen reminiscent of a goodbye once said, tied through space time to a novel I wait two years to read the last page of, postponing the inevitable because I don’t want it to end the way it ends; standing on tiptoes, watching the honey jar in a bowl of water, ants lined around the moat like a castle under siege. The babysitter’s voice echoes: Ants don’t swim. But starved ants do swim, they swim for honey, floating drowned in a ring of water; then there is an idea of future events that I have the remotest sense of, and I’m back with Ana on our midnight drive—these moments within reach, as real as now, occurring in conjunction with the present. “Talk to me,” she says. Pacing, I chew on it. “Let me spit some axiomatic drivel. I’ll start with imagination: Imagination is the conception of knowledge, and knowledge is the perception of what could be, as predicated by what is. Perception is the misconception of mind as reality. Reality is a feat of the collective imagination. Each member of the collective imagination, referred to as imaginators, composes a subreality, otherwise known as individual worldview, that contributes to the imagined sum by subtracting from the perceived whole. The role of each

imaginator is to create, out of matter, with the immaterial of his mind, a personalized reality that is ed into a working library of assembled realities. “In this way, the universe experiences itself in a diversity of perspectives. The collective imagination is capable of conceiving the indefinite potential for infinite forms that the universe offers, but it is not until all consciousness extinguishes itself that reality can exist in the universal state of all and at once. And that’s what reality is afraid of; to have no identity by the property of having infinite identities. Through our eyes, reality deceives itself with fantastic notions, such as beauty, housing us so that we structure worlds form the inside. We imaginators are existential architects, and we exist to extract threads and spin designs, to apply sense to the senseless; but slowly we are figuring it out, us out, and when that happens—but it won’t, reality will fight us, fight itself, so that we fight ourselves; because not even the universe wants to be disillusioned.” “Babe, I have no clue what you are talking about,” says Ana. “But don’t stop! I’m trying. I want to know everything your baby-bear brain thinks up! Even if it sounds like hocus pocus.” “You actually meant bogus,” I say, inexplicably saddened. “But knowing what I think up isn’t the same as understanding.” “Teach me! Then I’ll talk to you, but you won’t know what I’m saying because I’m too smart and you’ll ask me so many annoying questions. I’ll pat your grizzly little head and say: Sit on my lap, little bear, and I’ll educate you.” She titters matter-of-factly. “Now come here.” 31. “No,” she hums, biting the lip and pulling. “You have to convince me. Seduce me.” “Didn’t I just do that?” “With words,” she says. “Is this something you read in one of those girl magazines?” “M-mm,” she says. “Now do what I tell you.” “Nope,” I say, headshaking.

“When I tell you to do something you do it!” “No-no,” I say, scrunching the nose and leaning forward. Ana snuggles into me for warmth. “I am waiting.” I take a deep breath; and as we talk, I imagine us to be waggish poets, and rework our dialogue. I begin with: “I lay—” “Do you lay or do you lie?” asks Ana. “I lie,” I say, “but I’ll lay you where you lie if you don’t let me start.” “Lie then, and I will listen to you lay.” “Then I lay,” I say, “because I don’t lie when I lay my love upon you.” “But when you lay me, won’t you lie?” she asks. “Yes, and when I lie, commend me, for to lie in love is to lay a basic truth. What do you prefer, a liar in love or a layer of truth?” “Oh my, you do speak in layers,” she says. “You remind me of a certain bard.” “Speak thee blasphemies?” I ask. “Why, I will shake a spear in your face!” “And you say I lack wit,” says Ana, segueing into a British accent; on her knees, hands to her thighs. She peers into her mental rafters, and after a second, says: “If by shaking a spear you mean wielding a pen, and by pen you mean tongue, then you may dip your pen in my well; for spit, like ink, will whet your wit—I dare say it’s dry.” “What!” I say. “Do not wow me, poet; reply in kind.” “My wit might well be dry, but it’s not so dry as the serpent’s tongue, and no less forked. The tines I mean to mend, as should you, else the road you winnow rends me wroth, and in a pound of words I pen you.”

She purses her lips. “Babe, seriously, I want to read your poems.” But I ask: “What pen will cage a snake: a pound, or its weight in paper?” “Baboo,” she says. “What poems,” I say. “Your poems,” she says. “I know you do.” “Look,” I say, innately annoyed. “I already told you I don’t write poetry . . . but if you promise not to them, I’ll serenade you with whimsical quatrains as they come to me.” “Not fair. I want to read them when I can’t hear your sweet manly baby-bear voice.” I chew on buccal tissue. “My poems won’t read for you, but I will, so name a random item in your backpack. If something comes to me, I’ll recite it for you.” “A ruler,” she says. “One second,” I say, but nothing coming to me, I devise:

Straightedge ruler on a spree, Take measure towards this melody; Gauge me not by rule but key— The means to weigh null rhapsody.”

“It’s perfect! You can write me a poem every day forever and ever. Compose another one. It has to be about . . . scissors.” Again, I think before reciting:

“Two shears prepare for morning slaughter— Cut the love of nothing nether; Scissors draw not blood but water, Like flowers plucked and rubbed together.”

“Oh, babe, that is gross,” she says, and in her other voice: “But very, very beautiful.” “Hold up!” I say. “Something just came to me. It’s about you. I’ll title it: ‘To Villainess Writ in Wrought-iron Rhyme’

She scales my verse with schemes and scores, Her fetters draft a feather; Exalted mind, the mantrap soars! But snared, the changeling draws her tether.”

“I don’t know what it means!” says Ana. “But tell me another. This time you need to villainize yourself because I want to be the hero.” “It doesn’t work like that.” She crosses her arms. “Dry was your cue to kiss me, but of course you had to have the last word. It’s too late now. I don’t want to kiss you anymore.” “You’re not actually cross,” I say. “Mm-hmm, yes I am,” she says. “Like Jesus.”

“Then you forgive me?” I ask. “I know not what I do.” “See! Your last word!” “What? Not even. I’m replying so you can reply in turn; it’s the nature of discourse.” “Shut up,” she says, and I kiss her. She undulates in slow-rhythmic pivots, and I unbutton her peacoat so that its sidings weatherproofs us; lapels frisk the ears, and I scrunch up the camisole, dropping her breasts. 32. There, I said it. Fuck me with my words. And here is the love-hate of things; for I do and do not need to hear that she loves me, too, because the desire for verbal reciprocity is a human stain on the soul. Rely on the finer communications: the telepathy of body language; interpret your sacks-of-meatand-bone physicality. Transcend human inquisition, the coercion involved in hearing what you want to be said to you, so that your thoughts expectorate from their lips like pink-frothy phlegm. Yes, this thing called love. The mushrooming circumcast of psyche-motional irruption; for, as I love her, in equal measure, I hate her—per men who react with women; per creator who moonlights as destroyer. And as those words ring with church bells, we minister the holy sacrilege, blessing the blasphemies of our nothing-sacreds. But what do fanatics know of their fanaticisms? Those churchgoing doomsayers are genre fans attending parades and conventions, costumed in country worship suits and black dress shoes polished with smiles-through-teeth. The cognitively dissonant, they stipulate that for the consolation of eternal life, you must forsake the homage of reason. Sell your mind to purchase you soul. But the soul is indivisible from the mind. The soul is that grey-eminent feeling that one is someone more than oneself. 33. Propped behind the lamp is an unframed print of a man sleeping at his desk, Goya’s El Sueño de Razón Produce Monstruos. Sticky notes clutter the workspace. Their ends hover and I flatten them, but they bounce back, reading their one-liners here and there: Inner-space, like interspace; A dog named Satan; Self-multiformity; Kanaan: Teign Rube, Ghodin Tumens. I transcribe them to the

journal, and then record mentalities.J8 34. “What I mean is that the idea of good most likely originated in small societies as a psychological weapon. Good was a common cause, a strength in numbers, a defence against the survival of the fittest; from this common cause grew cities and laws, laws that forbade the other mechanisms of human nature, labeling as evil anything counterproductive to society. Good, then, is a survival strategy, a means to collective longevity through enterprising interdependence. Good is a faction, a guild, a system of propaganda, and it delineates what isn’t good in the spectrum between bad and evil. “In the beginning, the bad were who they had to be. Today, however, you’ll see these people, the nominally bad, who buy into the system of good and evil, and they struggle with it. Perhaps they tell themselves they’re not bad because they’ve had the good shoved down their throats all their lives, but they know they are; and maybe they feel guilty because ‘the good’ make them feel guilty. The ‘good warriors’ who make other people feel bad are worse than the bad who struggle with their ‘badness,’ as the ‘good warrior’ is a lobbyist and an indoctrinator. “There will always be people who were raised to be ‘good’ but are born to be ‘bad,’ although it is difficult to shake a belief or notion that was ingrained into you during childhood. You can repress it, you can disagree with it, you can believe it’s very opposite, but you cannot rid yourself of what you were taught as a child. And that’s why the bad may struggle. For instance, I still feel bad when I watch the Simpsons. When I was young I was brainwashed to think the show was evil; so now, when I chance upon it, I instinctively think to turn it off, but I watch and dissect the guilt, that I’m doing something wrong, while rationally understanding that there is nothing wrong with watching the Simpsons. I watch movies that are worse in content, none of which I feel bad about, but they weren’t forbidden to me when I was a child. “What I’m not saying is that the notion of good is bad, and as a disclaimer, it’s important to understand that I’m not a member of the good movement; not that I feel bad or consider myself neutral. What I’m saying is that good’s notion of itself created the notion of its opposite, christening the false dichotomy of ‘good and evil.’ “Evil is an alias, a biochemical palindrome for live, in that, evil can be a means

to live. Today’s modern psychopaths, serial killers and the murderous in general are either psychologically ill, or retain remnants of our prehuman or premodern selves, using the atavistic and vestigial techniques of some obsolete purpose. Take away the connotations of their names, the signifiers of ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ and you are left with two anonymous forces that seem to be diametrical. We call them by name because that’s how we’re raised—and to think we’re civilized, that human has some divine meaning, that we are more than our sociobiological identities; but we’re deceiving ourselves if we think we’re prepared for modernity. Now is a radical leap in our intellectual development, but the process is repressive and jarring, our psychologies are lagging and what we don’t sublimate, rankles. If we don’t give our visceral selves time to evolve, or learn how to exercise the animals within us, and provide outlets for stress by exorcising nervous energies, there will be madness. Day by day, we’ll all go insane. “I do think we have to make a choice: to live beyond good and evil as solitaires, or to live with people on human . To live with people is to accept their concepts and struggle with them, but to live otherwise, there are no such . One day, when I understand more, I’ll explain, but if I don’t, it’s because I chose to live with people, one way or the other.” 35. Hamlet fails to act because he doesn’t know how to make a logical decision based on feelings, and other illogical, supernatural occurrences. He knows his uncle killed his father, but how does he know? It’s ghostlike intuition. And why do people think Hamlet is so complicated? Everything he thinks, says, does makes complete circumstantial sense. And before I ask myself: ‘to be or not to be,’ I must ask: ‘Why to be?’” Can another person be my why? No, no one but oneself can be one’s essential reason to live. Yet, right now, I live for others. I don’t want to be in school, rendering myself comatose in this ineffective, inefficient system, but here I am. I am living for them and their why—their why is the world. Their why is each other—no, no I have it wrong! It’s not why but how! How to be? You can have multiple whys to live, but only a single how! And rushing into the hall, I fumble with my journal.J10 36. “The mind is a drug,” I tell myself. “Learn how to use it.”

“Yes,” I say. “Smoke it out.” And I say: “Fuck you, Rasputin—momma said knock you out.” “No seriously. Go to sleep.” “Sleep!” I call out, waxing whimsical. “Why dost thou walk me?” “Perhaps I am highly sillified,” I say, thinking on it, “but if I was a stroller they’d call me Somnambulator. Or Hypnowheeler. Basically, I’d be the Greek god of baby carriages.” “Yes, hello, Hermes?” I say. “Put Ares on; I need a wedding planner—hey Ares, now don’t get too excited because I’m not getting married, but I need you to plan the reception following my induction ceremony. Yes, the god of baby carriages. I’m free Tuesday. Of course on Mt. Olympus. Invite all the popular gods. Sure, the big guy can come too, no hard feelings—but only if he invites himself; yea, typical; no, you’re right, he does get lonely, and you know how he likes to pretend he doesn’t need the other deities. Okay fine, send an invitation, but remind him, no quarrelling with the pagans. He’s the grinch who stole Christmas and he knows it. No, he can’t picket Dionysia. And definitely no sermonizing, or Loki will stick him with another kick me, I’m the tin god sign. Yes, and make sure he knows it. My apotheosis will be a secular affair.” “Youse a-sleepless again?” asks a homeless man, as I walk by. “Hello squirrel trapper,” I say, trading him the wine bag for a squirrel pelt. “Yes, the latest cocktail of sleep tonics has proven itself ineffectual.” As he lectures I gaze off, peering inward. “Spurious potions—to the apothecary!” 37. “Maths!” I say, startling the branch. “Mathematics is the art of existence. Do not doubt it, baristas! When you look onto the world, how matter comes together and falls apart, you behold the mathematical statements that pronounce reality, reality, reality.” Vision blackboards me and equations chalk up; I reach out to touch them, paternally, caressing their sleek lines and curves, thinly written in freshly sharpened pencil, feeling for the numerical texture of matter. The eyelids brim

with deep waters. “My beautiful failures,” I say, dropping the hand, letting them go. “You weren’t enough.” And there is laughter. Headshakes. The jingle of fragmentary images. Words ring around the rosie; ashes, they spit from the lips. Then consciousness floods me and the lungs balloon with gossamer. Spiderlings crawl out skin, up neck and into mouth where they tickle, creep, pile—kiting down the trachea to hang from drag lines until their spider silks twine about and choke me like a noose down the throat that hangs me inside out. “Acidic shrooms!” I cry, fleeing the Garden—where roots grow. . . . Arachnophobic jittery motions . . . forearms, spindly hairs raised like jerk and spider flesh . . . I am the trees. Agoraphobic contortions, spasms, laughter, wriggling lumps in the throat—skin crawling with sensations, increased awareness, low vibrations . . . . . . A man walks out of the woods, looks around; a man walks back into the woods . . . a man climbs a tree, looks at the road, the car, the faces; a man climbs down a tree . . . . . . laughter . . . who’s that? . . . who’s there? . . . . . . reality thinks itself out . . . meaningless collections of data . . . my genome is smarter than me . . . genetic supercomputers . . . aware of our programming . . . the programmer . . . . . . vehicular mental transportation . . . carry me, feet . . . Biped, go! . . . . . . I am a floating nonentity. I am floating in the head . . . carry me, body . . . carry me . . . . . fleshy consciousness; bodily mindfulness . . . inseparable, yet halved . . . . . . Giggling googols . . . chatter . . . Midnight’s children reciting the satanic verses! . . . . . . Laughter. Not mine . . . whose . . . where . . . God? An anxious introvert?

Hardened observer? Computer scientist? Puppeteering trickster? . . . . . . I’m here. I’m here. I’m here . . . . . . take me? . . . where are you taking me . . . down . . . put me down! . . . . . . Ah, consciousness . . . . . . a breath of fresh air . . . a cool drink of water . . . no, no don’t drink that . . . . . . yes . . . fractals . . . fractals everywhere . . . fern . . . fractal . . . feel the fractals . . . . . . yes . . . there is something fractal about people . . . . . . fractal rivers . . . Savannah . . . are the rivers true fractals?! . . . . . . math-man, I see you . . . peek-a-boo, I see you! . . . creator . . . yes, creator . . . you’re not my god! . . . I see you, mathman! . . . stop hiding in the bushes . . . the burning bushes . . . . . . buzzing . . . the sound of the universe in the ears . . . I hear it . . . I am it . . . tag me, I’m it . . . catch me, can’t catch me . . . watch squirrels squirrel . . . tag, you’re it, squirrel . . . you’re IT! . . . . . . woods . . . runner . . . golden face rectangles . . . happy for him . . . glad he’s running . . . here in the foggy midst of it . . . . . . holy violence! . . . . . . primal things . . . crouching on logs . . . lurking in caves . . . . . . yes? . . . I’m not convinced you exist . . . I know I don’t . . . I don’t exist . . . . . . ants . . . ant around the sphincter . . . light . . . less and less light . . . the sphincter big . . . bigger . . . ant takes a walk around elastic expansion . . . black . . . pupils like space! . . . . . . No! No! overload . . . information . . . why a supermarket? . . . too many options . . . gratification . . . instant rice . . . pour water in the bag . . . how did it get here? . . .

. . . excuse me, sir, the chicken and the egg, where did they come from? How did they get here? No, no, not the chicken or the egg. Obviously it’s the egg that came first—dinosaurs and whatnot. Although still dumb, a better question is: The chicken or the chicken egg? But this packaged chicken, and this carton of eggs, where did they come from? Did you see the chicken that laid the egg? Have you been to the farm? No, no, don’t go! I need to talk to you . . . let’s talk this out . . . you see . . . talk this out . . . . . . agathokakologically . . . algedonically . . . alexithymically . . . . . . plastic? Plastic? . . . floor . . . lentils . . . pretzels . . . facefuls of floor food . . . . . . cracks in lentils . . . lentils in cracks . . . jump in the cracks . . . die pretzels, die! . . . . . . Ja! Ich habe die Wunderwaffe! . . . . . . nonsense, you philosophical zombies! . . . . . . armfuls of food . . . inherent mens rea . . . you can’t catch me . . . no one can catch me! AHAHAHHAHA . . . no, stop it . . . please . . . I don’t like that . . . . . . the meat is mine! . . . my food . . . run . . . fast food . . . leave me alone! . . . don’t touch me . . . . . . aw, you’re soft . . . . . . evils in the supermarket . . . yes, infiltrate the magic doors . . . stealth, yes, stealth . . . sleuthy . . . like chipmunks, and panthers . . . . . . Officer, I’m a kangaroo . . . do you know what kangaroos do? . . . . . . HA! . . . that’s what kangaroos do! . . . I’m a giraffe . . . have you seen what giraffes do? . . . inside . . . ha . . . haha . . . mine! All of it from nowhere . . . it comes from nowhere . . . . . . quiet . . . they can’t see me in the freezers . . . FROZEN VEGETABLES?! . . . . . . ha . . . haha . . . value . . . weight . . . weightless green inside plastic . . .

credit . . . ratio . . . . . . steal . . . steal everything . . . 38. “Still Running,” by Chevelle 39. What is in a moment that a child has an idea, a woman considers the tears she’s shed, a poet stares at a pen as if seeing a writing instrument the first time? I observe Andy as if I have never seen a musician before, dissecting the interplay of his pieces, how his long blond hair swishes over the body of his guitar. This is how he feels his music. He sets the mood with an original song. Why is he serenading us? What is his desired outcome? I ask myself. To be loved, listened to, laid. He thinks his music’s heavy, but they are his thoughts that weigh him down, exposing himself to the commentary of the masses, his creative essence cut down by the critics amongst us—who wag their tongues like floggers and ass-lickers, whipping up their overeducated public opinions; and we are ed by the haters who hate because they hate themselves, and by the lovers who love because they love everything, who are overwhelmed by emotions to the point that their frustrations escape like outpourings of the inexpressible—how they want everyone to know of their great love, to feel it like they do. Andy, this lover, imagines that we feel him, think of him, fall in love with his voice; or that, through his music, we commune with each other. He is into it like some sort of vampire, but I do not condemn him. I simply do not understand why he wants these things. He is human, I guess; this has something to do with it. 40. “I have a waterproof camera,” I say, at sunup. “I’ll retrieve it”—running to the car. We swim in the cool morning surf and take underwater photos, swimming like sharks into the lens. “One more,” I say, and resubmerging, we pose. “I love it,” says Ana, regarding our picture: the eyes are closed and I’m wearing the peaceful expression of the drowned, not quite dead, with little bubbles playing about. Ana moves into me horizontally, a mermaid kissing a sailor goodnight, on the cheek, seawater in his lungs. He slow-falls like weightlessness, an impression of a smile that isn’t there.

I imagine it’s a midday drowning, full-body flaccid, with a rippled sun refracted on the surface; he floats like low gravity, weighed down by drunken sorrows, and nods off, semiconscious, peacefully robbed of will. His paralysis moves him as he crosses into the realm of inertia—once a subject who would object to death —now an object subjected to ebb and flow. “Sleep tight,” says the mermaid, tucking him into the seabed. 41. Let it go; says a voice. You know she can’t tell you. But I reply: No, she will tell me, or I will let it go like the wind, like birds flying south, like storms ing through. I will let it go like things that come and go. And she will be something I saw once—who I loved from afar; just another moment I couldn’t hold on to. 42. “The Trickster” segues to “Conversation 16,” by the National. 43. Maybe those aren’t her words, but when she speaks, her voice is jarring yet dreamlike, that of sharks out of water, hooked and reeled, wormed into a light and awful world; breathtaking, where their bodies are too heavy to move willfully through space; and where instead they flap violently, then flop tiredly, beating their fishtails against the sand. I regard her like one those toothypredacious fishes, once beached, sunlight illuminating the dead of its eyes. If closely inspected, a cornea reflects birds easy with movement, swimming in the open air. Because being in Mother’s presence is like standing alone on the beach, facing the ocean, with shoulders hunched up and hands pocketed, thinking how big the water feels. Look to her; she breathes slowly; two, three exhalations—her chest rising in and out with the tides. It’s unnerving how someone can be so familiar yet entirely unknown, as if I’m conditioned to her, that knowing Mother my whole life has made her a stranger, or someone who I haven’t cared to get to know. When I consider who she is to me, I match my memories of this woman to her immediate portrait, wondering on how many occasions I have seen that bench swing, that lamp, that Mother. Blinking four, five times for blankness, I find myself inspecting them as if blurred by distance—not the same bench swing, porch lamp, Mother. She swings six, seven times; back and forth, yet side-to-side, as if moving imperceptibly in circles. I sway to her steady rhythm, cadential, tapping feet to

the tick of her metronome. It’s eight o’clock as these thoughts begin, and when we sit like this, when nine laps ten and loops eleven, I sense the vibrations of that unearthly knell. They are bells that sound out our nameless hour, and we become like ghosts condemned to the continuum of life within death. I listen to the undead tolls of those bells, desensitized to them, jaded but aware of angst and horror and instinct. I do not run, but address her, asking her tell me more, to make me feel like I’m real, that I exist, that I do, in fact, belong to the material; but our breakthrough is retrogressive, and I strike cuckoo in her detached and half-subterranean presence. I don’t like to think of Mother, but when I do, when she comes to me like this— in the form of an idea, an observation—it is because my gooseflesh chills inside the skull. She gets to people, under their skins, seated there and listening for the stillness of the night. The hackles rise because her simplicities tickle human nature like fingernails drawn across the face, lightly, skinning nerves and rousing uneasy laughter. Her quietude, of an unspoken but persuasive eloquence, excites cold bubbling spasms in the limbs of her ersby; who idolize her, stags on a black road blinded by a speeded light, so that Mother, like Helen, like Medusa, stoneworks her theatergoers with a posture that arrests their bones. Their pupils marbleize, and they become fleshy statues of moving persons sculpted in the standstill of forward motion. I am eyes and antlers mounted on the wall; because he is her son who beholds her like head-lighted deer—a stiffened body caught up inside his mind, listening to voices that screech of flight as they crucify instinct: Run, says the first. But the second whispers: Red, like road kill in the brake lights.J12 44. “You giving hugs has to do with empathy. An empathetic man feels another person’s pain, and when he encounters a distressed individual, he comforts that person not only to comfort, but to be comforted, just as he who helps others helps himself. Your empathy is different. You hug people not to comfort them, but to embrace them, because you embrace yourself. What I mean is that empathy kills two birds with one stone, and there is no such thing as a free hug. “There is nothing wrong with that, except the fact that no one its it; they

won’t it to being selfish because they misunderstand what it means. Everyone is afraid to live for himself, so they buy into this idea that they should live for others, that they should be selfless. Being selfless means to be without a self, as if that’s a good thing; but that’s no surprise, as we live in a world in which to be full of oneself is a bad thing. To be full of yourself—they confuse it with arrogance. Once I was full of myself because I believed in and accepted who I was; because I was full of what was me. I was essential. I wanted the best for the world because I wanted a world in which I could be my best. That was foolish of me, and I’m beginning to understand that. “What I’m not saying is that people shouldn’t help others, or that they should be materialistic, greedy, or arrogant, so don’t go confusing things. “Our genes are smarter than us. They move us in such a way that we do not realize their influence, or we struggle with denial when we do. Our genes trick us into comforting ourselves through the illusive act of comforting another. Those who do not comfort others either realize this and see through it, are contrary to and uncomfortable with it, or do not feel another’s pain and thus have no need to comfort themselves. “Why are you giving hugs? Because you do not suffer. You feel pain but it does not affect you. You detect the pain in others but you do not offer them the pathetic pities they peddle you for. You are unmoved by petty catharsis. You are unmoved by the frailty of the human emotion complex. You are unmoved by the weak who are within the capacity to help themselves, but don’t, because their weakness is mental. You expect people to help themselves where they are able, and you teach them when they aren’t. You give people the time they need, because we all need to feel, to undergo pain and hardship; and you expect them to meet these pains and hardships as experiences they will come to see through, that they will overcome; later to look back on and learn from. You have great expectations for people, but your empathy is evolved. Your empathy does not bring you down to their level, but raises them up to yours. For this reason, and only this reason, you experience the profoundest love. “Hodge, I believe you’re right, but the world is wrong; by some twist of logic, this makes you wrong because this world isn’t right for you. People don’t want you. People won’t have you. People will watch you fall. Even as you bearhug them, as you uplift them, people will watch you fall. That is why you are giving bear hugs.”

45. Unpocketing the earbuds, I wear the music. “Vicarious,” by Tool. A schism—earbuds and schizophonia. Like mirror imaginings, dissociated between what I’m looking at and who I see. 46. “Hurt”—reel of bittersweet montage: the aesthetics of retro-yearning for the vicissitudes, memory-watching home videos. Cash applies the lyrics to his memoir, summing up things to be forgotten. There is reverie, love, death, longing; and hurt like an ode to reincarnation. It is self-fulfilling requiem, resignation, the megalomania of self-symbolizing, and a trembling libation that harmonizes delusion with mortality; of crowns and dying for our sins. It’s a dark meditation of raw, weary melancholy; of long-drawn emotions; of crescendo. Elusive, illusive, and allusive; feelings of which I am strangely aware. 47. “Put. Them. Together,” I say, tone by tone. “Take them apart.” The tune flurries with detached violence. It is the melody of sheet music torn into weightless shards of freefall, all lit with flames and tossed about so they lull down like cradles on fire. Like some heated tears, they weep for a hallucination of instrumental massacre: broken guitar, harpsichord, stereo. So I stand and circle the harpsichord, sizing it up, a glorified keyboard, inspecting it before going at it with nimble-fingered precision. It is a methodical disassembly. Paints flake off as I pull apart edges, and out of disionate, aloof and open-minded anger, I remove the keytops from the keys, note by note, listening to the click-clank of ivory as they slip to the floor. “I’m losing it,” I say calmly. “I’m losing it.” It’s like walking to the gallows, says a voice. Like listening to your song, says another. Laying down the harpsichord piece-by-piece, building a pile of its component portions, I sit on the bench, meet the centerpiece and assess the deconstruction of an invaluable pretension. Here was a keyboard that played at a piano, reads its headstone. While, speciously, the funeral pastor declares: Its death was an act of counterart.

On the lid, in boldface permanent marker, I write: The harpsichord remains— and to be seen; here is the sum of its parts. Sitting, I touch the keys where they would have been, so that I play the air piano —almost a fantasy—playing as I could never play before. 48. As does a radio station that comes with rain, I’m precipitantly in-tuned. Her tears glisten like stretch marks, drying on her cheeks, and turning around, she checks for traffic in the oncoming lane; but one last time dreaming, I reach for her and with the fingertips draw back her lineaments, so that by looking through her guise, hers draws mine.⁴ Caught staring, vis-à-vis we shimmy to the side-to-side of magnets, repelled, because one of us has changed poles. 49. Our gazes meet as lifeboats do, after dark, when the sea is black and the surface is drawn as a line between depths—turn left into the ocean, right into the sky. Silently, we elapse and float into opposite horizons, rocking like cradles anchored in the treetops.

Journal

J1.

• I dropped out of high school to pick up on what I’m missing, to go into the world and learn from it, consulting wise men as I consort with fools; because I need to redefine the good in me, and exfoliate this self-portrait of evil. It blackens the pigments of my portrait. • A good liar makes people believe by tending to their doubt. A great liar makes people believe by giving them no cause to doubt. But the greatest liar knows that doubt does not arise in those he lies to, but from within himself, as their doubt is the reflection of his own. Instead, the superlative liar makes himself believe, if only for the moment, that his lie is the truth, by which effect, in so deceiving himself, has no need to lie to others, as he is, relatively speaking, telling them what he believes; as belief, in human , constitutes one’s truth.¹

J2. 6397 / 11 August 2008

• Just as a wonder object exceeds the descriptive possibilities of language, so an instance of awe, once witnessed, opens your mouth but stands you up—to wait there, wanting for words, looking like speechless. • I’m high on a change of mind state, but this is all wrong. I’m not looking for love. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions, but it’s true. I don’t require a soul mate. The soul, to me, is the fundamental aspect of the mind, the immaterial existence within; but neither, in those , am I looking for a mind-mate. I don’t want a family. I don’t want kids. I don’t want love. So what am I looking for—at most, someone to learn from, who can teach me about people; someone to use and who can use me; someone to watch the sunset with, who can

appreciate the beauty of illusion without falling for the illusory. I want someone who can teach me to live in the moment, who knows that the present turns the wheel of future-round-past, and will form for us a memory. Someone who moves on without looking back, unless, time and again, in the fondness of recollection —who learned from me as I learned from her. Someone who understands that she belongs to a series of someones, just as I am in episode in hers. Someone with whom a bridge can be built, one that does not burn in the breakup, but stretches with our diverging riverbanks; with whom the bridge remains to cross at any juncture. Because what is built with the immaterial does not take like castles on ground-giving earth, but drifts like those built in air. Because, although people do change with the age of time, their basic persons remain as constants—basic persons being the essence of friendship. • I like to think that one story’s beginning is another story’s end, and the last story’s ending is how the current story begins. To think that each ending between lovers is a nominal formality, so that whatever we share, it does not end because persons are not so fixed as the contents of their memories. To know that the pursuit of happiness is fallow because happiness cannot be pursued. Happiness is the byproduct of an ulterior productivity; happiness like twenty-one percent oxygen. Oxygen is not the goal of vegetative respiration but the byproduct of photosynthesis. It is a byproduct that feeds breath—animals, fish, humans; because we all live on a side-effect, a spinoff, an incidental waste-product. Happiness must be planted. Happiness like air. o It is not the dumb euphoria of breathing pure oxygen, but happiness like work and struggle. For instance, the act of painting produces both the object’s portrait and the painter’s desire (the portrait is the product, and happiness—substitute what you will—the byproduct; or vice versa). • Yet, despite these notions, Ana feels like the one—impermissible!—an idea I do not believe in, as I cannot be had in such definite ; not because I am against possession, but because I am immunized; man, in his natural state, is made to move on but not away from, to exist in a constant state of free-flow. o Each relationship isn’t necessarily sexual or romantically involved, and by indicating that each someone is analogous to an episode in a series, I do not imply that my lust is serial or that I mean to tabulate lovers like notches on a timeline. Each relationship does, however, essentialize a shared quality unique to the pair. This series, then, to me, is something like platonic polygamy, in that, by

meeting new people and forming various friendships, we are all platopolygamous.

J3. 6389 / 3 August 2008

• Every now and then, I see a girl, not necessarily beautiful, but in possession of a quality or quirk that strikes me as inconsolably attractive. I conjure a scenario of a lifetime spent together: we talk, hold hands, fall in love. I dissect her mode of existence, and I share mine. We struggle, we fall deeper in love; we grow old and we die. Lying together in our decomposition, we are the guests of honor at a feast of worms. Our bodies hypertrophy from a highly complicated network of elements and organisms to an interconnected, immaterial disintegration in which time and relative dimension undertake controversial, definitive roles. But I am a spatial witness and repeat the process, seeing in all of them a special something—an indescribable trait, almost psychically or intuitively understood —and I despair, but for a second, in not having the time to spend a lifetime with each.

J4. 6427 / 10 September 2008

• I’m people-watching all the you’s out there. I see the surface you, the regular who frequents this place, but I know there are a thousand you’s within you. The difference between Bami Easton and us is that Bami becomes his persons. I look inside the head. There are a thousand me’s vying for recognition at any one moment, a thousand me’s all wanting to express themselves: me, the actor; me, the writer; me, the wanderer; me, the physicist; me, the misanthrope. There is visceral-me, feral-me, cultured-me. I am me the-thousand-and-one, the “one” representing the me who houses the thousand. I am meta-me, the me who thinks this, the me who wants to be the one thousand all and at once, to live a thousand simultaneous lives in this singular body. But the thousand don’t want to be me.

They want to possess the one: the mathematician, the polyglot, the bank robber; they want their full potential. To self-actualize. Their energies rend me apart so that I step towards the front door with five toes pointing to the back. o Additionally, each of the one thousand houses their own thousand, breeding a mind of one million voices. • A person in the modern age has people to be. He is truly Protean, capable of anything and anyone. Like Bami, we are neither defined by our names nor confined by our natures—we are within, somehow, more than what we perceive without. Man is big, and when men, specieswide, realize this, Man will multiply his proportions. • Such that: I Am Who Am = Not Who He Says He Is. • And now my thoughts wander after a girl, speaking her name—Ana, they say. For the past month, in those hours that record our minutes, I feel something feeling me. When I to forget myself, I realize she feels it too; that we share this sensation, some sort of communion that baffles the sensibilities of our nonserendipitous minds—rational, unbelievers of magic, two logicians who know better than to fall in love at first sight. • Because whatever love is, and however long we endure, our encounter with it is fleeting. • Like physics and all pursuits of knowledge, Ana is a concept, a system of the theoretical; what she’s made of lurks in impenetrable depths, existing not only in theory, but in application. She cannot comprehend the gamut of her containment because she is massive, a collection of miscellany too large to quantify. I render myself impotent by the suggestion that I should know her, that I could ever know her—that yes, she is fathomless, an ana for my thoughts; and for this reason, I retreat to inward places, sifting through stacks of ideas in search of scribbled algorithms—solutions to human mind and behavior—but no! I know that all of this is too great for me to comprehend, that all her divisions fall into place according to their formula. She is a nuance in the mix of our species, a subject of formulaic expression. If this is so, all I can do is be a part of her creation, and she a part of mine; for although her equation is beyond my wildest grasp of the abstract, her creator is my own; one who has, in this matter, coded us in such a manner that our parts correspond where our wholes come together.

J5. 6439 / 22 September 2008

• Dream; 3:31am. Jumping on a trampoline situated above a tiger pit; the pit becomes a bottomless well and I jump as high as I can to escape, launching into the stars; only to discover the trampoline’s mesh was a reflective surface, falling up into spatial abyss. • The entirety of my waking existence is devoted to working this out: it stalks me like classroom daydreams, fighting off not boredom, but the appearance of boredom, making it look like I’m paying attention. It haunts me like a peaceful moment within a nightmare, a second taken to reflect on the validity of the dream, appreciate it; that this is, in fact, happening, according to the accepted reality of my dreamworld. • As with all people you think to spend forever with, time moves quickly with Ana—even in our silences, when nothing is said and thoughts are only felt. We clock out to find, upon punching in, that the hours didn’t sign out with us. In timelessness, we revolt, but a revolution keeps pace with its rotation, and the song must end, the sun must set. • I am this castle, and she penetrates the divers structures of my defense. I wonder why I maintain these battlements in the first place. It’s silly to think in of getting hurt, that there is no reason to be hurt because people lie and cheat and fuck each other over and that’s life, I know it, it doesn’t bother me— but I am this battlement stocked with armaments because I want nothing of those things that don’t bother me. With these defences, I am made to observe others, to catalogue their persons. But I see no reason for it; why shouldn’t I relinquish some designs of myself? I am dually made to go wildly like a lusus naturae, all in love despite our forms—but I withhold, falter, wither. When clams open up, divers steal their pearls, everyone out to get theirs, to run off with your soul once you’ve opened up your heart; and I laugh at myself, knowing nothing of heartbreak, that I but entertain such notions, simia Dei; an orchestra of demons laughing as my angels sing; a chorus of slander and jest—that these are but thoughts and my solitary worry is that I am not worried at all—that this, too, is a figment of the real.

• Because I simulate sensations; me and my worlds are the simulacra of life. • And because I love her beneath the surface; I can tell myself I do, because I feel it buried there, preserved in the substance of unconscious self. • Thus, I have arrived to an illogical conclusion: love. So I ask myself: What is my understanding of love? Love, before Ana, was relegated to the realm of the factually inconceivable; that love is unimaginable because love is imagined. I did not believe love to be a true expression of real-world phenomena, considering it a faculty of illusion, associating it with similar modalities, the worlds of self-deception; love, like delusions of grandeur. But if love is made real, did I cause its effect? Did I simulate love at first sight? By this I exclude obsession—lust—because this is not the age of infatuation, but grit and the permanence of deeper stuff. I do, I think, despite all doubt, believe it; that I have gone from being evol to being in love. The repercussion is that I find myself inexplicably enhanced in all personal realms, as if love is a magnifier amplifying my best qualities; as if an elementary understanding of mankind has been illuminated, whose ladder I climb, the human condition one rung less elusive. • Which means I am a metaphor for arriving at the ultimate non sequitur. It is as if I am in love.

J6. 30 October 2008

• I am possessed by an unyielding drive to purposelessly create. But still, to act without purpose, I don’t understand it. I wonder if Ana picks up on the little things. Every single action an externality intended to impart a message. Every song I play a musical (muse-ical) medley I want her to hear, full of thoughts or feelings I would transmit intuitively; that I played this song after this conversation in this silence because I wanted to say what I couldn’t score words to, ideas that aren’t necessarily in the lyrics but in the overtone and undertones. I wonder if she thinks the things I want her to think when we waste away in solitude, just lying there, forking, wanting nothing else—that I love her, that I love the truth, that I want her to be the truth; and it’s in the facial expressions, the pauses, the movements; everything calculated, not before but during—a

spontaneous equation known exclusively to the moment; how often I blink, look into her eyes; or what she thinks of those deep, sudden involuntary breaths—the while deep in thought, watching mind-movies. I wonder if she is as intentional as I am with the songs she plays. • I am not a fixed entity, but an old river with new water. The body is the river and the mind is the water, always the same and never the same. I am unique to each moment, each person, each world, and I am changeable amongst peoples. I react with friends, family , strangers in a manner analogous to a body of elements reacting to a of other bodies of elements—how mercury reacts differently to oxygen than it does to chlorine; how it reacts to temperature, and other more extreme forces; electrochemical, mercury like the rhythm of heartbeats. • Because I am a mercurial algorithm. I have no idea who I am beyond the present moment, despite the fact that I do not operate in the present moment. • Who am I? Who is meta-me?

J7. 6529 / 21 December 2008

• I am drawn, in this moment, to these words, by a sense of design: o Even as I write this sentence, feeling it is meant to be, that I am its vessel, I entertain its contradiction—that in all probability this is not meant to be; that I choose to write it according to the serial laws of chance; that there is no meaning; that I am a purpose-driven fallacy. • I look up, imagining him looking down—the author of my thoughts. My words are written in his penmanship, and the calligraphy of our minds commune by pen and paper. We enter an eternal merger as ink blots the page, and I exist in fine, black strokes. o My author’s handwriting is sloppy.

• 6539; New Year’s Eve; 8:10am: The saudadics. I am continuityundead. • Inspiration is a bitch. She stands you up. • Brain-eating mindlessness; never is forever; it’s always in Neverland. • We are by nature outer limitless (out of bounds). • Reality is a social construct, like the Internet. We are tunneling into a virtual reality within our virtual reality. • My twin, look me in the eyes. Mirror us into mise en abyme. o Tell me what you see, and I’ll show you who you are. • 8:28: Memory palimpsests. Makeover selves. Spit out your shadow. • I am a self-machining origami fixture. I fold into person, puzzle, concept; unfold to single sheet of paper; fold into new person, puzzle, concept; unfold to single sheet of paper. • And I am somnambulist, philosophical zombie, equivocal eidolon. I am trickster, observer, hidden hand; creatures of deliberate spontaneity. • i is imaginary, like the number. • And so I become the hilarious realization of self. The auto-suggestion of being. • 8:58: This mindset is driving me crazy.

J8. 6552 / 13 January 2009

• Dream: Digital world; all the clocks read: 88:88.

• Dream: In which time actually moves backwards in an inverse relationship to human perception. • So long as generational life cycles prevail man will remain adolescent. For mankind to grow up, a portion of the population, although removed, must be provisionally immortal, and act as shepherds, or gods, moderating human activities. • Being is dually beset by an innate lack of being, that emptiness you seek to fill with drive and knowledge and desire. • Consciousness is willed movement. • To discover my soul, to determine that essence of mind, would be to conceive the fundamental aspect of reality. Synecdochic soul, synecdochic multiverse. • Ask yourself: What is more valuable to you—time or money? Does time buy you money to spend, or does money buy you time? • Men are like children wanting to build the best castles in the sand. • And the days don’t merge properly. Social scenarios are rough drafts badly patched together. I relive the mental hotspots during the existential mundane. Existing in the in-between is ed as the memory of contemplating other memories. • Together, Ana and I are as parallel lines; our paths are theoretically infinite, but entrenched in the human scheme of things, we must, eventually, as parallel lines go, cross and diverge. • So I regard her asleep in bed. I need to know: does love acquit the lie? Is love the greater good? What of truth? Will I have justice or justification? Does her love absolve her lie? • Ana, like an ana of her parts. Ana, like an anatomic anomaly. Ana, like anaphora. So I consider her gestalt; she seems like a life sentence, for she can be read and parsed and broken down and punctuated, but I can’t read her all and at once, as the mind, like that perforated sheet, sees only in bits and pieces. I can’t read every word in her sentence at the same time because the big picture, while realized, can’t be ubiquitously conceived in the totality of its parts.

• Beauty is a deception of nature. “Don’t destroy me,” sing the flowers. “Plant me. Bend me to your will. I will adapt and prosper.” Nature is the ultimate Machiavellian intelligence, but man is the ultimate product of nature; young, beautified—and in being beautiful, is inoculated with an immunity to beauty. If beauty is a deception of nature, and man is beautiful, then the quality of man is self-deception, but man—in being inoculated—has a second quality, and that is his ability to see through his own beauty, his own deception, and into the nature of illusion.

J9. 6569 / 30 Jan 2009

• Love is an ichneumon wasp. It paralyzes and impregnates you, so that its spawn—emotions—can eat you from within. • A thought hops across a pond of water lilies; white lotus flowers open up to blue, but they are few and far between. Changes occur, maladaptations phase out, and mutations in spiral structures dominate the gene pool; the thought evolves to run on water. Nearby thoughts observe as the waterrunner transforms into the ongoing evolution of an idea; this idea concerns love: treats with it, dines with it, embodies its avatars. And I say to you, you—who dream—that there is dearth in these words for you romantics, no substance to exaggerate or revel in: love is not what you think, and neither is it how you feel. There is no poetry to swoon to, no themes that induce faintness in the limbs. Those feelings are not love but its precursors and its symptoms. So like all good ideas, this one on love spends its spacetime on metamorphosis, looking into the horizon of the lily archipelago—a sight multiplied in proportion to the expansion of its mind. The pond is now an ocean, and the waterrunner learns to walk away. • Because if life was about happiness, then life would be happy. But it’s not. It’s not about love, work, pain. Life is not about any one thing. It’s about the vicissitudes. It’s about change. Synergy. Life is about all of it. • So the truth remains submerged. I listen to them lie to me, dissecting every intonation, syllable, physiological betrayal. They are all lying to me. For three weeks, I let it alone. For three weeks, I’ve let them believe that I am satisfied

with their collaboration, the story they invented. I tell myself, in a poor imitation of self-delusion, that they will tell me when they’re ready; at least Ana will. She wants to tell me; I see it, but she holds back. It’s as if she can’t it it to herself because saying it out loud would make it real, and then she would have to live with it. • Is she being honest with herself? No. Is she being true to herself? Maybe. If her true nature is deceit, then she is being true to herself. • Did the serpent deceive Eve, and did Eve deceive Adam, or did they deceive themselves? • The visceral dream quality of being elsewhere: I have dreamt of Peru every night for nearly a week. It’s like I am there when I’m sleeping. In the dreams, I know I am looking for something; no, waiting for it, to reveal itself, what I’m there for. • I listen to various voices on the subject of emotion: o Today’s particular brand of melancholy is unably specific. o I have, as of yet, to understand this nuanced sensation of amusement. o My current experience of joy is misleading and generally vague, thus perplexing and most probably fallacious.

J10. 6571 / 1 February 2009

• Up until this moment, I was somehow. Fuck some! I am my own how! I am always changing, but I remain the same how. It’s like the river. New water through an old river! Like river water, whys will come to me, but first I need to be my how. My how is my first why to live. The rest of the whys will flow through my lifetime. • If so, then Nietzsche had it backwards. It is not he who has a why to live, but he who has a how. He who has the how to live can bear not only every why, but

every why not. He who has his how, and thus, who has himself, will have many whys, and contend with those of others. The how is his condition within conditions, and he can be made unconditional. The whys are his reasons, purposes, ambitions for subsistence—the things that come to him and the things he will go through. Why this, why that—why, what additional reasons to live for. Man’s whys are many, but they all refer to his how. • My how suggests that despite the nihilism, the solipsism—despite reality and everything that contradicts itself, I exist and will, in the meantime, continue to exist. But none of this makes me think any better about Ana and Bami. I love them, but do I allow them to lie to me? Do I forgive but , or do I move on? I have my how, I have my first why, and while Ana and Bami count as whys, maybe it is time to find new ones. After the first, truth is my second-most important why. Nothing else matters, so long as it is owned-up to, itted. I do not believe in morals or virtues or any other human construct of ideologies, other than what I accept as my own, simply because being a real person requires me to believe that I am real, that punctuated at brain’s center is not a black soulless void. Because we are human, and in being so, in itting our humanity, we overcome all those other things, the morals and ethics and virtues—they fade meaningless into philosophical quibbles and religious meaning-mongering. One day I will explain it to them. Right now I don’t have the patience, the words or the world experience to do so; but one day, when I have lived more, breathed more, seen more—I will return to this idea; until then, I will live out and explore my how. o The how is neither the question nor the answer but an inexactitude, like being. • So, like Hamlet, everything I don’t know is a truth that lies in wait. Be patient, give it time, and the unknown will reveal itself in the waylay of revelation. • It thusly follows that I need to layer systems of knowledge. In human , I know what I know. In universal , I know something of what I know. In total terminology, I know nothing. But to live like a man, I must accept the human . I must learn to know what I know. I must operate within the human sphere of knowledge. • Goals, Peru: o Fashion a meaningful purpose within a meaningless existence.

o Create me. I am a work in progress. o Be alive. Become a real person.

J11. 6579 / 9 February 2009

• It’s a shifty deceit I employ, allowing them to believe that I believe them, for the time being, saying that no they are right because yes I am paranoid, until I ask again, more innocently, maybe as a joke, or seemingly for reassurance when taken by doubt. It’s strange to hear a lie you know the truth of; you realize things, you observe the subtleties: gestures, fidgets, poise. It becomes an addiction to find out truths, secretly, casually inquiring about them, to ask whether this small thing is true or not, and to observe how they lie. • Who was I with people, back then; what did I see in them, that I believed? • The day is 6580. I don’t know where they come from; they go by unnoticed. • I feel as if I was mis-processed with an alien defect. • Because the mind is the thing. It is a narrative: each moment, no, each sentence in a life receives its truth value from the sentence that precedes it, originating with the opening line of one’s book. Every word that follows the incipit builds upon the truth-value that the opening line proffers. The problem with humans, however, is that we don’t our opening lines; we have no recollection of our births, or of the formative years that mold our personalities. It’s strange that the age in which we learn the most are the years we the least, as if early childhood is the nihility of infantile genius, an introductory pretermission, our forgotten prelude. We can’t who we were because we could have been anything, grown into anyone, creating the particularity of the someones we now compose. Babies are the true geniuses, absorbing everything and capable of learning all, but there is no memory of their infinite minds, no conscious foundation on which to rebuild. • Constantly, I ask myself: where is my hidden partition, my inbuilt restore

point? How do I recover who I was before my earliest memory of who I am? • Undergoing impersonal metamorphosis. Preparation for carnival: volatile thought patterns; mercurial cynicism; acting out; a carefree ambivalence in the days preceding. o Become the introjector. • Weirdly happy.

J12. 6581 / 11 February 2009

• Mother continues to baffle me—my porcine thoughts flutter some distance below the stars, attempting to spread their wings, and I am just vaguely aware of her being there, wondering if her thoughts, too, are flailing about the great unknown. • The idea of the big picture is like the mirror in Mrs. Ramblin’s classroom. What you see is angular perspective. You can’t see everything in the mirror and neither can you see what’s hiding inside the desk, and you definitely can’t inspect the mirror without seeing the contents of its picture—to look at the glass without seeing the image it reflects. • Inamorata, the effect of your lie substantiates the ineffectiveness of my truth. • People don’t change; they learn from their mistakes. They get better at lying. She was so convincing—so emphatic, so truthful; she will only lie better next time. • There are captivators who know how to make others believe in them. They know others want to believe, so they make that belief real for them. It is time for me to turn the voice inside my head. I consciously will myself this change: to make them disbelieve in me; to discredit my intelligence, my integrity, myself. • I’m thinking of the things I’ve said that I don’t believe. I say them to conceal my mind, to make them think that I think differently than I do. That I am like

them and I belong. But now, in the time to come, I will proclaim things outrageous, do things they cannot believe. I will go out like great sweeps of fire that catch as quickly as they exhaust their fuel. Because I want them to question; I want them to ask: look at this one, is he mad? I want them to think. I want them to say to themselves: Maybe I’m the one who’s mad. • It is only when everything is not right and isn’t as it should be that I penetrate the unimaginable depths of consciousness. These depths, like trenchant conduits to some inexplicable inspiration—as if divine—are the discontinuous highs my creative cravings starve for; because without insights, in the duller minutes of sentience, I am uninspired, disinterested, vagrant. I am not meant to be who I have let myself become. I am not meant to live for others, or to be lived for. Incuriosity stems from stagnancy. I need to grow in itinerant solitude, with myself, through people—theirs but for a moment, living with the one as I wander through many. • Notes on lying: First, as I learned, you need to believe the lie. Second, you must want it to be true. Third, allow it to become your truth, so you can make it true for others.

J13. 6598; 28 February 2009

• On whatever light shines, darkness shed first. • Society of immortals; leading cause of death: Suicide. • Suicide is the only logical course of action I can gather from my seemingly meaningless existence, but I persist in being illogical. This is obvious because I’m alive, recording this incidental concern. Therefore, I am not as rational as I believe myself to be. o Curiosity > Logic • I have reached two tentative conclusions:

o One: Endings don’t consist in their ends, alone, but are found consistently throughout the whole. o Two: It’s all the middle until the end when the end has the quality of surprise.

Notebook

N1.

Okay, so I guess I’d like to comment on what you said in the hallway. Genius. I hate that word. What Einstein knew and what the smartest human knows is nil compared to what there is to know, in that the intelligence differential between a genius and a cockroach is paltry compared to the difference between what a genius knows and everything he doesn’t. He absorbs less than a speck of sand in a universe of knowledge—not to say I don’t believe in men as conscious creators, because I do, in our potential, in our ability to bend and shape the world to our minds. Maybe one day we will manually enhance ourselves and accelerate our mental evolution, and that of other intelligent species as well, but true human genius will take hundreds of years to cultivate—that is, if we survive; but the current trajectory of worldly affairs predicts our inevitable extinction. Earth is a sitting duck. We’re betting on a pebble in the game of cosmic marbles: catastrophic symmetry, surreal devastation, holocaustic beauty, inhuman apocalypse—these are the corps of what reality is made of; and Bami asserts our dominance? Out of necessity, mankind will build a biospherical planet; until then, we are huge, but remain subservient to the hugeness of nature. Because nature isn’t any one thing—it’s the earth, the lithosphere and tectonic plates; it is our climate, the sun, and comets on collision-course for Earth. And nature is us—but when we secede from its empire, when we declare independence from our sun because we can travel to other stars, we will have established parity to our environment. When we grasp physics to an understanding in which we are capable of controlling reality and natural forces, that is when man can assert his dominion over nature.

N2.

Hey Boo, Basically, I’ve been stressed about our relationship because I don’t know what I want, other than you. In the long run, I know it’s you at the end of the race, but I can’t tell you how long it will take me to finish. This couldn’t possibly be fair to you. Is waiting worth it? These potential time periods make Christmas seem like an evening apart. What it boils down to is that when we are together everything is perfect. When we’re apart, it’s impractical. Is it reasonable to say that because we love each other we should be together? Can you wait for me when I can’t even tell you how long I’ll be? Would you be constantly worried? People grow and change day by day, and in being spatially removed, we would literally be growing apart, changing daily without adjusting gradually, so that when we meet again, we could be different people on the outside. Would who we are inside see through these changes? These are questions you should think about because I want to be fair to you. I’ve given you a glimpse of who I am, and you need to decide if you want to be with me. Sometimes true loves meet too young; people must grow into themselves before they can grow into others; that there are things we have to do that make us not only who we are, but who we see ourselves becoming; things that ripen us; so that when we’re ready to eat we don’t spit each other out—that this is us, and I will wait for you.

—Christopher

N3.

Hi Baboo,

Frankly, this relationship is stressing me out too. It’s not just that you’re leaving. It’s everything else. Yeah, it can be perfect, and sometimes it can be so perfect. But when it’s not, it’s unbearable. When we aren’t getting along and we both have stuff we want to say but we can’t get it out, it’s unbearable. Usually, we can’t get it out because we don’t know how to phrase it without making the other one mad. I hate looking at your face when this is going on because you look so sad and pensive, and I just want to know what you’re thinking, but I’ll never know. I care about you so much, you mean the world to me. I only hope that I could mean half as much to you. But this is what I want. I want us to be together when we are together and . . . I guess not when we aren’t. It wouldn’t change how I feel about you. I still want to talk to you always and know what you are doing, but waiting around for an eternity would kind of suck. I know that you are going to have an amazing time, and I’m going to miss you like crazy. But I think you would have an even better time if you didn’t have me to worry about. —Side note: I think it is silly writing each other to be able to say anything, but I kind of like it. I can think it through before it comes out. Back to business— I’m going through a rough patch this year, and I have not been the best girlfriend in the world to you. I am sorry for that, but as of right now, I cannot change. I’ll try, but eventually I will just slip up and end up right where I started. The truth is, I do love you so much, although I couldn’t bear to say it because I was way too scared that itting it would eventually lead to another heartbreak. All I want is for both of us to be happy, and if that means not being 100% together all the time, then ok. I want to be with you when I can have all of you, body and mind. P.S. I’m crazy about you, and even though maybe you forgot that, I hope when you wake up you will . P.S.S. I’m only saying that if you agree with it. I don’t want to be with anyone else. I want you to be happy. How do you feel about the arrangement? Smiling with my eyes closed, —Ana

Hey Boo, I’m fine with the arrangement. We are together until I leave, and when I’m gone, we’re separated. When I’m back, we’re together. If you leave, we’re separated. I don’t know exactly what that means, whether it’s the deconstruction of labels or something true and free-wheeling, but one day, we’ll understand it. We’ll be together in a way in which we can never truly be apart, in which we are always together—delocalized of space. —Christopher

N4.

To my dearest skanky sex kitten/slash/bear: I miss your baby bottom sooo much. I wish you were here so I could get drunk and pee on you and love you for hours at a time. You are very pretty, and I like the way you smell. P.S. I don’t what your voice sounds like. P.S.S. Hint, hint. P.S.S.S. You’re my favorite. I haven’t called you because you never pick up my phone calls. And you never call me back. It’s okay. I forgive you. I’ll call you soon. And if you really care about me you will answer!

WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU ANSWER

Christopher, it makes me sad when you don’t call. And you never call. If you don’t want to, I guess you don’t have to. But why wouldn’t you want to? It

confuses me. I always tell you that I want to hear your voice, and you just do not care. I don’t want to nag you and be annoying, but this is how I feel.

N5.

Hello my darling, I know now that what we had is broken. I’m so sorry for doing that. Not just for the act, or lying about it, but for ruining something that was so perfect. I’ll never forget lying by the water and picking out which stars we were. If I could go anywhere, or do anything in the world, I would only want to waste away with you. When we don’t need words to speak because your touch says so much more. I know that that can’t happen because of what I’ve done. All I can ask is for your forgiveness so we can be friends. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I can hope. You really have changed me. I am better now, and for that, I will always be thankful. I’m so sorry I can’t say the same for you because I know I did the complete opposite, and I’ll never forgive myself. You were perfect, you are perfect . . . an angel, and I killed you. If angels don’t die, only fall, then I pushed you. I hope that one day, you will find someone who gives you the “answers” you are looking for. You deserve the most amazing girl in the world because you truly are the most amazing man. I loved you from the very first moment I saw you, I was just too scared to it it. Coincidentally, it was my own fear that eventually brought me to the same inevitable pain I always knew I would feel. I guess the saying “you can run, but you can’t hide” really is true. I know that you have lost faith in me, but don’t lose faith in people. Somewhere out there, there are good people, pure people. I know this is true because one time I met one. His name was Christopher, and I loved him more than I ever have or will love anyone. He was my angel.

—Ana

Hey Boo, I the good things too, and I cherish our memories. Today, I feel only anger, or the thought that I should feel angry, mainly at myself for being unable to overcome my hate (a general equal opportunity hate, not solely directed at you), and not being able to be as good to you as you deserve. But I don’t feel like I’m a real person anymore. Somehow, I’ve lost myself to the relative; and I cannot find the old me in this new, anomalous divergence. I can’t say that I won’t go out with reckless abandon, or that I will return to you as the same person. But I can say that I have self-efficacy and an exaggerated sense of optimism. That I will learn about myself. That I will attempt to extrapolate goodness from intention and human nature. That I will contend this hate, this overwhelming progressive throe that I feel changing me. What I can say is that I will try, for you, and that I will look for whatever goodness you say I have—whatever it is that touched you. But if I don’t, if I keep falling as I have—how innocence metastasizes to the best, most efficient brand of evil—then I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe to forget me. Because it happens. Because I don’t think I’m the person you love anymore. Who you fell in love with isn’t me because I don’t feel him. And it wasn’t you who did this to me. You are blameless; whatever happened, I did it to myself. It was me. It was my role on observer status. It was my inability to see the good, because all I wanted to see was the bad. Whatever good I did know, I discovered the inlay of deceit weaved into its fabric. The quote by Oscar Wilde that I got from you sums it up: “There is no man who is not, at each moment, what he has been and who will he will be.” It’s not your fault, and this “hate” isn’t person-specific. It’s an aggregate of many things. And it’s not a true hate . . . I guess I don’t have the word for it. But as for us, we make mistakes. We are young, not meant to be in a serious relationship. We’re scared, learning, and it’s all very acceptable and rational. Maybe it just sucks that it “happened to me,” as a personal offshoot, which is why it’s difficult to approach with even the farce of objectivity. You don’t know it yet, but it was me, not you, who pushed me. I fell by my own devices.

—Christopher

N6.

So many times I said: I am incapable of premeditated infidelity and lies because I honor truth. I value your honesty over your fidelity. Humans are carnal and impulsive, especially when inebriated, so infidelity is understandable. Conversely, humans are also capable of reason and can recognize their shortcomings, which is why dishonesty is inexcusable. That was as true for me then as it is now, but for one major alteration: I am capable. You don’t understand why I did it. I was madly confused, and while this is no excuse, I did it so I could understand. I don’t understand you or anyone. I had sex with Hannah because I couldn’t shake the thought that everything was a lie; that you were all fooling me. When I knew about Whitey beyond a shadow of a doubt, I wrote you off. Hannah was about me. Not you. I was manic in the throes of enlightenment; yet blind and deluded—thinking myself privy to some illustrious insight. I’m beginning to see that people can’t live according to the expectations of philosophers. Good philosophers are bad at philosophizing—who can live up to our ideals? Who can inhabit our worlds? Who can live out our dreams? I know I can’t, not because I’m not able, but because I refuse. Until I decide what to do with myself, I will exist as itinerant observer. Until I understand what I need to do, I will do nothing.

N7.

Ana:

I know I made a mistake, but just to let you know, that mistake would have never happened if you wouldn’t have cheated on me first. I know it’s not the same thing, but I’m trying to do right right now, and I know it’s too late. But I have to talk to you to figure everything out, and you won’t let me talk to you. You only say shit on here. I don’t want to argue with you on this inanimate object. It is retarded. Can you please talk to me, like a grown up, so we can have a mature conversation? You didn’t lie but you didn’t come clean immediately either. I know what I did was so wrong, lying about it forever. I know it wasn’t about me, just like I know this is something you have been struggling with long before I met you. That doesn’t mean it is okay. I know you know it was fucked up. Of course it hurts me, and I will never forget it. I’m not taking it personally, but as you just wrote, it sucks being on this end of the deal. I know what it is like to force yourself to forget you love someone because you are angry. I DO know that! We both did these terrible acts under the intention that we would no longer speak/love the other person. Turns out we both were incapable of staying away from the other. I kept lying to you because I LOVED YOU. But that wasn’t okay, and everything is so fucked. I hate you so much. So fucking much, but guess what? I hate me more. I can’t write more right now because I can’t see.

Christopher:

I write because that is the only way I effectively communicate. It’s how I get these kinds of things out, so stop attacking me on that. Basically, I’m frustrated because I stressed that one thing. I told you to do anything but lie about it because I thought I knew everything about human nature, but I obviously overlooked something huge. So yes, we are human and we are crazy about each other, and when that happens, you go crazy on that person because you care so much and you’re frustrated, and things don’t come out right, but all you really want—more than one-upping the other with some clever point or cutting them down hurtfully or screaming at them and raging to your friends about how much you hate one another, is to kiss that person and know, just know, that that one-up you made

didn’t comfort you when you pointed it out, that it killed you as much as it did the other; that you want to be with that person, and that the anger you externalize is a means of coping with the hurt emotions that neither wants to it we have . . . that the anger is a facade you want the other person to tear down so they can bearhug the shit out of you.

N8.

Douche, I never told you, but you were my first love, that of brothers. I saw in you the world; and in your eyes, I found an aspect of myself—someone who I’ll take the time to create. From afar, I will go on loving you, and I remain your friend, but our friendship does not require interpersonal relations. When we meet again, it will be serendipitous, if ever, and if not in real life, then in our thoughts as they wander to each other. Bami, I don’t need to know you anymore, but I want to tell you if not who you are, then what you are capable of: Outstretch your reach and you alone, above men, of your own volition, and by your own ability, will soar in Icarian heights— on your wings pigs could fly.

—Mind Dildo

Christopher

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Open Road Slightly Stoopid Knights of Cydonia Muse Weird Fishes Radiohead November Has Come Gorillaz Madder Red Yeasayer Almost Forgot Myself Doves The Stranger Lord Huron Lateralus Tool Still Running Chevelle Don’t Let It Bring You Down Neil Young The Trickster Radiohead Conversation 16 The National Wax Simulacra The Mars Volta Ready, Able Grizzly Bear Vicarious Tool The Butcher Radiohead Nineteen Tegan and Sara

Anachronistic content

Ana

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Nineteen Tegan and Sara Isis Yeah Yeah Yeahs Diet Mountain Dew Lana del Ray Honeybear Yeah Yeah Yeahs Cheap and Cheerful The Kills Soft Shock Yeah Yeah Yeahs Night Time The xx Ghost Tonight Chairlift Islands The xx I Hate the Way You Love The Kills Zombie The Cranberries Runaway Yeah Yeah Yeahs Arpeggi Radiohead

Bami

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

If I Were a Rich Man Fiddler on the Roof Don Quixote, Op. 35 Richard Strauss Return to Dea The Man Who Laughs Your Hand in My First Song Jay-Z vs. Explosions in the Sky Life’s a Stage Play Elijah Bossenbroek Stoned Immaculate Jim Morrison Do You Love Me? Fiddler on the Roof No Love Today Chris Smither Mars Gustav Holst Assault Elijah Bossenbroek Am I Not Merciful? (HQ) Hans Zimmer Theme 3 (End Credits) John Murphy Shine on You Crazy Diamond Pink Floyd

Hodge

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Jed the Humanoid Grandaddy 3030 Deltron 3030 Computer Age Neil Young Upgrade Deltron 3030 Paranoid Android Radiohead Madness Deltron 3030 Computer Cowboy Neil Young Mastermind Deltron 3030 He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot Grandaddy

Hannah

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Brainy Slow Show Knife Colorado End in Flames

The National The National Grizzly Bear Grizzly Bear Strand of Oaks

The Garden

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34 Ghosts IV Nine Inch Nails Put the Muse in Music Genius Tessellate Alt-J Mouthful of Diamonds Phantogram Ghost Town First Aid Kit Shadow People Dr. Dog Drown The Smashing Pumpkins Matilda Alt-J Shelter The xx Lies Glen Hansard Promise Cocorosie Truth Doesn’t Make a Noise The White Stripes Samson Regina Spektor VCR The xx Touched VAST Right in Two Tool Hurt Johnny Cash No light, No Light Florence and the Machine Cinder and Smoke Iron and Wine Leave Glen Hansard Riverside Agnes Obel

Carnival: An Act of Parallel Processing

There is a feeling in the breath of things. A pause, and all takes you. It comes with a madness that hotwires the body. Madness like too much consciousness. Madness like the throes of mental evolution. Madness like eyes opening in every pore, hair follicle, molecule. Blink. All leaves you. It goes like the sink of gooseflesh into smooth, white skin. Switchgear and candlepower. Intracranial pyrotechnics—the infinite expanse of extrasensory insight is too much for the brain to process. Watch the riot of limbs in motion. The movement of the beast—they come like sing-song guerrillas, crazed by the frequency in their ears, crowding you with breath. They move like dancers to an undead rhythm, says a voice. They are chaosmongers, says another. Become their riotmaster. Count your two minutes hate. Mobocratic jeers—bring out the laughingstock! Malice punctuates their dotted eyes; pupils, like things that fall through. Look about carnival, at the blur and soak of black and light. Here becomes the rotoscope of half-animated reality; the colors matte-glossy, trippy, dreamlike. Look into the swirl of two-headed faces; the miserable, the discontented, the mean. You are a stranger they would stone, execute, destroy; for as miserable as your beating is, as broken as your face, you do not share their misery. Stranger in the blackness, shadow of the unknown—see into the commune of their eyes. Discover what they know: that you are alone with people, but they are lonely within themselves. Feel around in their collective discomfiture—a dialogue of eyeballs in the dark: your hands are in their brains scooping out spaghetti. Watch the surprise of extroverted sensation. In-and-out zoom—whorl of awareness. The pain is there but not yours. You do not identify with yourself, and vicariously you experience this body the way people experience those of others—

as foreign curiosities, tools to make them feel. Listen to the veins inside the ears, the aural flow of blood. It is the sound heard in a seashell; the rhythm of the ocean in the spiral of your cochlea. Listen to the knelling of nondescript bells. A fiddler stands in the blackness; he drags on soulful vibrations, sounding out lyrics with his slow-burning laughter. Listen to this recital like the thoughts of a composer heard in the emotions he puts sound to; the vibrations, the symphony. Look into the people, their pixelated expressions, blurred and overlaid by a magnified grid of squares. The mob pressurizes red and their scalps blow corks and stopples so that brain-fog rises from their cratered skulls. Eat from bevel-rimmed bowls. Yes, says a voice; eat their brains. Burn them, says another. A shadow plays over you—a voice sounds from on-high. Listen to Johnny: “The fool is not a fool, but a mirror of fools!” he says, jogging you attentive. “You do not see what you see! Watch him deceive you!” Hear the turn of the screw, the thud of tools on an oaken table, bundled in a length of dirtied canvas, rust stained, unrolling to the metallic clamor of surgical utensils. You are the skinned man boned on a tree, and the men who skin and bone him. You are the man with a pipe shoved up his rectum, and you are the men who drop in famished rats. You are the man eaten alive from the inside. Who madly laughs as starving rodents disembowel him. You are the man cooked inside the Brazen Bull, alive in its hollow belly, and you are the men listening to his muffled screams like the guttural rage of oxen, running their hands through the red-tinted vapor billowing out its nostrils. You are the man dangled from his shoulder blades by rusted iron hooks, slow-dipped into cauldrons that gurgle oil. You are William Wallace drawn and quartered and the men who draw and quarter him. You are the shrieks in dungeons that wrinkle time and furrow brows and echo into timelessness. You are the room of your greatest fear.

You are two gladiators in the Colosseum, one in the dirt with a sword in his mouth, the other wiping sweat and blood as he stands before the emperor of the most advanced civilization in the world, waiting for the roar of the mob, thumbs up or down. You are Christians thrown to Roman lions, and you are Christians slaughtering Muslims for land and Jews for sport. You are one of the most intelligent societies in history running concentration camps and gas chambers. You are the desensitized, who sees all this, the unaffected. You are our lord the flayed one, and Aztec priests wearing the skins of the sacrificed. You are Prometheus bound for trickery. You are Epimetheus condemned by the moment. You are nothing is sacred. You are profanity. You are Night. Squint for the reanimation of dreams. Interact with your imaginary realism, where a canvas of images superimposes reality. This scene noir strains your eyes and faces disappear. Remove your head of its senses. Bend the rectilinear posture of your body. Feel the air like a blind composer, your hands trembling to the loll and whiffle of leaves. Your fingertips feel for touch and your knees stammer like pistons. Your feet pump out a trail of spurs, and stray dogs heel to your dragged footprints. They sniff at the gore tracked along, licking at dust and blood, hacking at the clots in their throats. Play your visions like the flickers of overhead fluorescence; the men are all nude and castrated, standing semicircular; they pant heavily, matted with sweatdrawn lines down chest and leg hair. The stumps of their penises ooze blood with each breath; red dribble on scrotums. “The satiric hit man!” they call you. “An atheistic mirth.”

Open them up. Fuck. Blood. Milk. Semen. Black Mac enters their eyes and cuts loose their faces. They laugh and he slots through them like a ghost, staring at you, at your wounds; curious, transfixed; reminding him of something long buried—and he takes you to where you lie in a ball swaddled in all your goodness and all your evil. Lights flash in the darkness and Cam meditates before you, off and on, sitting motionless, wrapped in fire. He is a torch that burns for himself, and all about you there is a shade that decreases in size, sloughing with umbrae that beat like wings made of wax. Look into them. The thirst in their eyes is for the taste in your mouth. Drink your blood, they say. Spit out your shadow. Feel the mass of living matter. Where men stampede like marathoners; like hordes of the condemned; like the dispossessed herded on forced marches; like trails of blood too scarce to fall and tears too dry to shed. Look at whole peoples and the divested, the diasporic, the disenfranchised—whose children are raised with the world on their shoulders, whose backs do not bend, whose growth will inherit the planet. Think about all this, and mouth: “It happens.” You are the peril of indifference. Suspend yourself in the mirrors of their eyes, where kaleidoscopic you’s hold blades to their necks. You laugh, looking down at an empty hand, but looking back up your reflections smile at you—each wears a necklace of thin silken red. Rubies dangle like raindrops on a chain, the first tears that fall with shock before belief sinks in; but the necklaces bead up like brimming eyelids weeping openly—redness gushing, flowing; then laughing with gurgles, slow pumping sobs in rhythm with heartbeats slowing down until all their throats fall open. Watch them hang a saint by his halo. You float in their eyefuls; vitrified, the shards of their irides glued into a copycat mosaic. You don’t see me in the collective looking glass, but you; you are Hodge, and you are my other you’s; you see how I think of me, who I am to each of them. What is a realization? you ask yourself. Something always known but never thought of? A redirecting of currents, a big bang in the center of the brain? What is in a realization? It had to have been known all along. What provokes its

revelation? Black Mac falls into the air, rising with people’s faces, and the brain molts your mind without provocation; you are meat off the bone on a well-done roast. Watch yourself run off a cliff. Catcher, you say, let me fly, or fall. Forget this field of rye. You hold out your hand. I touch your eyes. Because Hodge, you have to die. Heads up—it descends, a summons to insane! There is a rage about you. Indiscriminately you know things; susurrations down the spine like the whispers of a roar to come. It resonates as a new frequency and you revel in your newfound senselessness. It is the idea of collective furor; voices heard; of terrors, of shrieks, of sharp driving demonania; and the isolated insanities of the grossly in-tuned—those philosophers, scientists, artists possessed by secular divination, gone batshit in the rape of creativity. Feel the electromagnetic tingle; you become like a connection to the universe. Emotions move through you like fishes swimming upstream—but curiosity and doubt, yes! You go with them. You live for wonder and awe; of ideas had, and that heat in your dermis that light-bulbs your skin. You know of adrenaline and crazy and that rise and fall when witness to greatness: the final sequence of an epic, the hackle-raising moments of books and movies and shows. You are Goku ascending into Super Saiyan, and you name yourself gladiator, Maxiumus, who defies the Roman Emperor. Your rage falls, but you are unreaped and drift off in the afterwarmth of wrath, spiraling down a coil in our thoughts—your winding path within that follows my unwinding path without. Farewell, you say. Fair well. Before you go, cremate our rotoscope. Drop your match and sound off to the light-up of movie reels.

Your spilled voice sings from the earth. Aborted phoenix, you had to die.