Submissions

            Found myself in the Vegas airport in a 2^1/2hr layover thanks to this girl I know who works for the airline.  People with luggage trailing at the heals like faithful dogs, talking to themselves like sci-fi psychopaths with earpieces and everyone going nowhere not fast enough.

            I was feeling twitchy and restless.  The ringing of the terminal slot machines wasn’t helping any.  Neither was the fresh memory of the intimidating and insulting officers of the TSA back in Oakland who insisted on subjecting me to the prods of their meaty fingers, the delectable stares of their beady eyes while rifling through my underwear, or their stifled glee at dumping every carefully packed item out of my backpack whereupon they brought their coffee-stained hairy faces close to mine to ask me to remove my shoes, jacket and mask.

            Truth be told I’d been feeling fidgety since the night before when I got home from the bar.  The Dude I live with was laying in wait in the bushes in front of the house with a sniper rifle in one hand and a scope in the other.

            “Hoogatcha!”

            “Jesus God!”

            “Slacker,” he casually appraised.

            “What the Christs?”

            “I’m waiting.”

            “You scared the shit outta me! What the fuck are you waiting for?”

            “Targets.”

            “I’ve got a headache.  Take that damn gun offa me.”

            “It’s not loaded.  I’m just getting a feel for it.”

            “New?”

            “Yeah.  Well old, but new to my collection… once I’m sure it works.”

            “Cool.  Just don’t test it out on me, ok Dude?”

“We’ll see.  Just don’t get on my bad side.”  He wrapped a camouflage jacket over his shoulders and ducked back down into the lawn bushes.  If there’s a zombie apocalypse or another Great Depression I rest assured knowing our house will be well defended, but in the meantime I often have trouble getting to sleep at night knowing The Dude is the way he is.

“I’m going to bed,” I declared over my shoulder wearily, “Got any Tylenol?”

“There’s some multivitamins on my desk if you want.  Couldn’t hurt.  Unless they kill you.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “They’re right next to the poison.”

            “Well which one’s which?”

            “Oh they’re not labeled.”

 

            When I got up in the morning everything had melted from my rattled mind except for the thought of Nigel.  My own damn brother, and I realized I hadn’t actually talked to him in over a year, and hadn’t heard anything from him in about 8 months.  To think that he’d been here in this city with some poor girl, knowing what Nigel is capable of…

6AM I called my mom hoping to pounce on the subject at hand.  Keep the spawn of unwanted topics at bay with a quick sweep.  A barrage of questions, click.

            The trouble with plans is that they fail to come to fruition.

            Those touchy topics are so incessant because their triggers are unidentifiable.

It was a dry morning and I couldn’t have told you what I was thinking about except the statuesque Persian girl in the basement apartment across the street, hair black as shoe polish, a caged bird singing songs that only I could hear.

            Dad answered.

            “Hi son.  Decided to go back to school?”

            “Hi Dad.  No, not yet.  Where’s Mom?”

            “She’s taking a nap.  Written anything good lately?”

            “All roads lead to Rome,” I said.

            “It’s good, but hardly original,” he added, “funny, for Nigel that phrase always seemed true, but for you, I think it was more along the lines of ‘All roads lead to roam…”

            “Yes, that is funny… that you should mention Nigel I mean.  Heard anything from him lately?”

            “No, not lately.  Last I heard he was in Alaska I think.  Some new job or something.  Why?”

            “No reason.  When’s the last you think you heard from him?”

 

…

 

           

 

            The whole country lay bright and silent beneath me flying out of Vegas impersonal and cold.  We ascended into the sun and soon I had forgotten all about the submissive hordes raising their hands to the metal-detector gods like common criminals, and the guilt-tripping father, the gun-toting housemate… A few perfect hours of flight time where mindlessness and bliss cross streams in the high atmosphere until all the unconnected dots started scuttling back at me and I did my best to assemble them together.

I had told the girl part of what Nigel had done, hinted at the rest which I suspected and she didn’t ask too many questions but offered to put me on a plane right away.  The benefit of working for the airline is that you can do these sorts of things for yourself or select friends. 

“I’ll pay you back the fifty bucks.” (Because as with all free perks, like last-minute flights for friends and loved ones, there comes a nominal price)

“Keep it baby, we’ll call it even if you stop here in Chicago first.”

“Promise you won’t call me Baby?”

“No.”

 

The stewardess on my present flight had a bit of a tendency at over-smiling her way down the aisle, and her grin started to make we wary of her altogether so I rummaged through my bag until I found a printout of the last email I’d gotten from Nigel… which as a matter of fact wasn’t meant for me at all.  He had sent it to my mother, almost a year to the day before, and she had forwarded it on to me.

 

 

            Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.  I suppose I learned that from years of wearing a mask and writing stories about it.  When Nigel got back from India last winter he was alone and I never heard anything else about anyone named ‘Christine’.  Might have stayed, maybe he left her behind, those are the best possibilities I could hope for her.

Later in the Chicago terminal I saw my stewardess stilting along, still grinning wide like a lip sutured hyena and laughing into the embrace of a big Filipino.  Big sweeping curves of snowy asphalt awaited me in my cab out into the suburbs where I would stay for the night before continuing on to Houston in the morning.  Nigel’s last known address, as far as anyone could tell me.  The sun had gone down and the temperature with it.  I was struck once again by that sad melancholy of snow of which California has left me gratefully bereft.  Pale village buildings all unlikely decorated in sad attempts at Christmas cheer.  Blown-up Frosty’s and Santa’s piled high and garrulous.  Giant flickering multicolored string-lights thrown along the drab front of an eerily vacant apartment complex beseeching (lost) JOY, and paying tenants who are Pet Free A Must.

We pulled up and for a moment I remember just what I was getting myself back into by knocking on her door once again.  But before I could change my mind she flung it open and stood there stretched out in the tall frame, wearing barely anything, ready to wrap me in a hug and a kiss.

“OBaby’so Goodta seeya!”

“It’s been a long time.”  I took a nibble at her neck and ran my cold hands down the rounded flesh of her hip.

“Not really, I mean, it doesn’t feel like, I mean…” She bit a pale lip.  “I didn’t want to tell you before baby because I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

“Tell me what?”

“Your brother.”

I went rubbery.

“What about him?”

“I saw him. Here.”

“When?”

Records Spin

Side A: Tracks 1-3
1. Lamb of God
2. Anatomy of a Stain
3. Simian King

Under the highway you blink and you miss it.  I know its there and I still pass by without realizing I've gone too far.  Occasionally.  The watering hole.  The place I go.  The drinks are cheap and they know my name and have the decency not to use it when referring to me.

"Heyyy!  Ole Masky's back!" says the bald guy.

"And old Masky's front," I say, "I'm all here!"

"Shut the fuck up," says a guy at the bar, half spinning around on his barstool with an angry look in his paunchy eyes, "I'm telling a story here."

"Joel's telling a story here," the bartender informs me in a conspiratorial whisper.  "Whadalya have?"

"Let's start light and go dark."

"If I had to kill someone to save my family I probably would," says Joel.  "Like that time I killed a guy to save my family.

"You killed a guy?"

"I warned him.  'I'll fuckin' do it,' I said 'don't think I won't'.  So he says to me 'if you do, I'll fuckin' kill your family.  And then I killed him.  And sure enough, mysteriously, next day my family's been murdered."

"So to save your family you got them killed."

"I didn't get 'em killed.  It's a mystery.  I said that.  Fuckin' keep up."

"So whadja do?"

"I got a new family.  But first I spent the next half-decade living free out in the wilds of American generosity.  Some weep for the wayward soul of man, but not I.  We live in a generous land full of generous spirits.  Hobos, tramps and whores.  I slept on trains, woke to the sight of the countryside appearing and disappearing frame by frame out my window.  Then I met a girl and settled down.  Popped out a few more kids and were doin' great but then she died.

"Your second wife."

"Third.  But yeah, my wife."

"So whadja do?"

"Well we had an extra bedroom.  So my daughter asks if her boyfriend could move in.  She was 11 or 12 then so I figured it was alright.  The guy seemed cool.  Kept borrowing my razors though, that was a pain in the ass, but the guy was alright.

"Your twelve year old daughter had a boyfriend who shaved?"

"Yeah.  Alex, or Alan or something.  He was in college.  Bastard bought me this here pen."  Joel picked a fountain pen out of his shirt pocket and displayed it to the huddled throng.

"What was the occasion."

"Father's day.  I'm a granddaddy."

"Today."

"Yesterday.  Ariel Lee Scriebner.  6 pounds and some ounces."

A few people clap. 

I grappled at a complimentary bowl of week-old popcorn, the door in the back opens and Jeff emerges, stumbling.

"Shit yourself out a baby?" Joel asks. 

Jeff squints.  "I fucking feel like crap," he says with no enthusiasm.  Jeff's the big guy who works the door.

"See some ID Dayton?"

"It's Michael," I say, squirming to free my stolen wallet from my left rear jeans pocket.  Jeff glances at the license without looking at it.  He hawks a revolting wet cough and retreats to slump on his perch at the door to watch no one come in.  The bartender sets another beer on the bar for me and I move it onto my napkin coaster.  A dark ring emerges.  I take a sip and set down the cup again and again, in an effort to draw the Olympic rings.

"Guinness," the bartender says, "A velvet universe in a red Dixie cup."

Three guys are playing Magic the Gathering at a dark table in the back.  An Elton John song comes on the jukebox and everybody groans.

"We used to listen to this song back in high school," someone says.  "I had a chemistry teacher who fought in 'Nam.  He used to tell some crazy stories.  We never had to do any work.  Just get him started talking."

The bartender blinks.  The bald man orders another drink, by setting down his empty glass.  Hearing no objection, the guy telling the story continues:

"One time he told us about how they found this chimpanzee right?  Or orangutan or something.  Anyway, everybody in this village was dead but the monkey lived so they kept it around as a kind of a mascot, and one day the guys in the outfit were hanging around having an arm wrestling contest.  Seems somebody thought it'd be a good idea to let the monkey in, which was a stupid idea since monkeys have infinitely stronger arm muscles than any human ever could."

"Infinitely." I repeat.

"So they let him in and he beats everybody in the outfit.  All of 'em.  Just WHOMP, and its over.  Heh heh.  Trouble was, the monkey thought he was the alpha male after that and started beating up on 'em and trying to get 'em to do things for him.  So they had to shoot 'im."

 

 

SIDE B: Tracks 1-3

1. Elegy for the Written Word

2. All Hallows Eve

3. Brothers

There's a camaraderie in the place that feels like home.  Maybe it's the musky smell of countless cigarettes, hops and mops.  The guys in there don't get out much because the world doesn't offer anything but punishment, and inside this dim cavern is a haven where the drinks keep coming as long as you occasionally pay, and the conversation flows like the heat off a warm country hearth. 

"What if deep space were filled with flesh-eating bats?" someone asks.

"Then I guess we'd be fucked."

"I was just thinkin' 'bout it cuza sumthin' I read."  A new guy walks in and Jeff holds out his hand to check ID but the new guy doesn't see it and walks on past.  Jeff doesn't object.  He looks like he's going to be sick.

"What's the last thing you read," I asked the bald man.

"Godel Escher Bach," he said.

"You mean like recreationally?" the new guy asked.

"Yeah.  For fun."

"My cousin's buddy's dad's Playboys.  Had a not-so-secret stash right next to the toilet.  Hell I'd spend more time on that shitter than I would home in bed!"

Jeff made a bursting noise and ran along the bar for the restroom again.  We heard him lock himself in and groan painfully.

"What's eating him?"

The bartender shrugged.

"What's the last thing you read," the new guys asks, pointing to the house tap where the bartender fizzles out a pale brew.

"Cicero."

 "You're looking a bit scruffy," Bill says, "when's the last time you shaved?"

"April."

"How's that girl you were seeing?"

"Dead."

"You still seeing her?" Joel asks.  The new guy punches him. Joel sniggers like a little ogre.  "What?  He's Dumb-Ass'd Man.  Just cuz she's dead don't mean he can't still tap the girl."

"That's Da Masqued Man," I correct.

"Ya I been meaning to ask about that," the new guy proves, eager to ask a question he's been harboring since I came in, "What's the deal with the mask?"

"Halloween was a hard time for me, I'll tell ya.  Little kids on the street laugh 'cus it looks like I'm dressed up in my costume early all those few weeks leading up to it with the mask and all, then the night of people ask why I don't dress up."

"What'd you dress up as?"

"Last year I dressed up as myself."

"So, without the mask?"

"Yeah.  I looked just like a normal person."

The clock on the wall chimes and someone points out that it's now midnight.  Wednesday.  Game day.

"Yay."

"Alright let's play a game."

The bald guy perked up. "Still writing those?"

"I thought you wrote poetry on some web blog?"

"It's called Blogetry," I said "and yes, I am still writing them."

"Have you written anything good lately?" the new guy asks.  I pulled out my little black notepad.

Everyone's in everyone.

Capsized hulls salty all

lucky not to get

Caught

In tidal pools of stars

Where gulls cry

deep seas swell and sigh

Eating

Rose and fall and dark and all

Tired souls whisper "Gone"

And dead and live are one.

Silence.  The bartender stares at me.

"You should go back to college," the new guy says, "that's good stuff."

"Not bad."  Joel scoffs.

Jeff flushes the toilet but doesn't emerge.  The dishwasher rattles'n hums and the guys playing cards "Hurrah!" and stomp their feet.

"Have you got a brother?" the bartender asks.

"None of your business."

"Well, I think he was my business.  Last week.  You read that thing and it made me think.  That voice.  Guy sounds just like you.  Looks sorta like you.  Had a pretty girl on his arm, shorter hair, drank a lot and left a lousy tip…"

"Sure sounds like my brother.  But that's impossible."  Last I knew Nigel was in Milwaukee.

"The guy said he was out here on business.  Had on a nice suit.  Treated that pretty little girl like shit."

"You've got a brother Masky?" the bald man asked.

"Yeah," said the bartender, "you remember right?  Last Tuesday.  That jerk with the pretty girl.  We don't get too many guys like that in here."

"Or girls.  When's the last time you talked to your brother Masky?"