• I met my other, biological, parents when I was 26. They are the parents who appear in this book, named Mom and Dad.
• Abe is the child of biological Dad Dick Grossman, a millionaire
poet.
Friday, March 9, 2007
Autobiography One: In Which It Is the Real World and the Events Are Those Which Actually Happened
Born and given up for adoption and adopted
by a nice Jewish couple from suburban Massachusetts with a big house. My new Mom, though, was suicidally depressed and tried to kill herself 7 times while I was a child, she threw herself downstairs and took too many pills and Dad and brother Jeff and I were making a poignant tableau in mental hospital canteens, our sandwiches abandoned as containing mental illness, and we stared through the floor
Mom killed herself successfully when I was 13, in her celery Pinto hatchback parked in the drug store parking lot where she had had her prescription re-filled and
the man who pounded on the car window gingerly to wake the lady up, and I decided this was not my history
the while wrote stories in which some fox/horse/dog ran away and found liberty, shantih, realities at angles to the bad one here, they were magical excursions then I disappeared and I would wander in the forest having faith that I could find a path that led into another realm in which I never found my house again
I would go without food and
I would sleep in cold mud and
like a warrior, but got back in time for supper and defeated, and
ever the “lone wolf,” where the word “wolf” a flattery like a hard candy that lasted in one’s mouth as the dishevelled little girls ride the school bus alone
and oh, bullied at school, so the alone enforced. And brother Jeff and I had a rift when I was eight and never spoke to each other again. I had the basement and my father had the ground floor, Jeff was on the second floor. Jeff and I would pass my father on our way somewhere and he would say “Hey, hey, hey” like Fat Albert as we passed not looking up, Dad sighed into our silent wake and
Jeff was smoking a lot of dope then and had that Farrah Fawcett poster on his wall is all I really know.
And I remember then that posters were important, you could go to the poster store and flip through the posters which were hung like doors, stiff upright pages that you turned on a kind of a hinge, and shop among the fantasies that other people had, then at home they used to sag on their tacks and grow cheap-looking overnight and you would sit and look at what became of your poster of whatever celebrity or tiger cub or movie in the dark and it was emblematic of what had not been provided to you in this world, it was
unfortunate, and Dad had a heart attack when I was fifteen, he claims I never went to the hospital, that’s what really hurt. But I remember standing there beside his hospital bed and he was telling us when he would come home. Really no one ever came home from the hospital, they never really came home and the smell of hospital was something as familiar as a baby blanket crushed to your nose
and I had totalled his car while he was in the hospital, and I got arrested for shoplifting, my trite cry-for-attention things that weren’t cries for attention, they were all you got, that was all you got was that fugitive feeling of excitement when you stole, you couldn’t even steal anything that mattered but the feeling of stealing that would last for a couple of days, like a good book
Dad was always well-meaning, was that cute Dad figure who made dumb Dad jokes, you would say to him “You’re driving me crazy,” and he’d happily retort “Take the bus!” and used to sing “The Ants Go Marching One by One” and that was what America, I think, meant to people of his kind.
But when it went to shit he had not a thing to say, he was as silent as an egg, gnawed up inside that life had not been what he had every right to expect he was a Jewish engineer, with the government job and married, faithful to his wife and he provided and he learned as an adult to be anti-racist, to consider the other guy’s point of view and to appreciate the right of the Chinese to choose a Communist government because they had problems in our relative affluence we could not hope to understand and he was the nice guy
but when it went to shit
and we were kids and unforgiving
brother Jeff and I never spoke.
When I was thirty one I was doing an office job, the office phone rang. And I was called across the room to it, told by the deputy head it was my brother Jeff. I knew that my father had died.
Then I took the phone and said hi, Jeff.
I went there, Florida my father retired where we were having the funeral and I was the only one who wanted to view the body and I stood alone with my father’s corpse in a big room cheaply carpeted, with small windows like the windows you have in suburban basements, so it was meager underwatery grey light and touched his frozen brow and, cold as water, I got down on my knees and cried from a conditioned reflex triggered when a loved parent dies.
Jeff took the ashes of my father. They were in a black plastic box. It was sealed with wax, and the crematory form was Scotch taped to one side. The name and address of the body were typed in the blanks and in the box, the ashes were in a thick clear plastic bag, with the finest ash smeared more like a liquid yet it rose in the air
when Jeff and I sprinkled it in Chesapeake Bay one Christmas Day. There was a Mexican family laughing coming down to the shore as we walked up from the shore: when they saw us they all stopped talking.
Then we drove back to the city with the radio playing
by a nice Jewish couple from suburban Massachusetts with a big house. My new Mom, though, was suicidally depressed and tried to kill herself 7 times while I was a child, she threw herself downstairs and took too many pills and Dad and brother Jeff and I were making a poignant tableau in mental hospital canteens, our sandwiches abandoned as containing mental illness, and we stared through the floor
Mom killed herself successfully when I was 13, in her celery Pinto hatchback parked in the drug store parking lot where she had had her prescription re-filled and
the man who pounded on the car window gingerly to wake the lady up, and I decided this was not my history
the while wrote stories in which some fox/horse/dog ran away and found liberty, shantih, realities at angles to the bad one here, they were magical excursions then I disappeared and I would wander in the forest having faith that I could find a path that led into another realm in which I never found my house again
I would go without food and
I would sleep in cold mud and
like a warrior, but got back in time for supper and defeated, and
ever the “lone wolf,” where the word “wolf” a flattery like a hard candy that lasted in one’s mouth as the dishevelled little girls ride the school bus alone
and oh, bullied at school, so the alone enforced. And brother Jeff and I had a rift when I was eight and never spoke to each other again. I had the basement and my father had the ground floor, Jeff was on the second floor. Jeff and I would pass my father on our way somewhere and he would say “Hey, hey, hey” like Fat Albert as we passed not looking up, Dad sighed into our silent wake and
Jeff was smoking a lot of dope then and had that Farrah Fawcett poster on his wall is all I really know.
And I remember then that posters were important, you could go to the poster store and flip through the posters which were hung like doors, stiff upright pages that you turned on a kind of a hinge, and shop among the fantasies that other people had, then at home they used to sag on their tacks and grow cheap-looking overnight and you would sit and look at what became of your poster of whatever celebrity or tiger cub or movie in the dark and it was emblematic of what had not been provided to you in this world, it was
unfortunate, and Dad had a heart attack when I was fifteen, he claims I never went to the hospital, that’s what really hurt. But I remember standing there beside his hospital bed and he was telling us when he would come home. Really no one ever came home from the hospital, they never really came home and the smell of hospital was something as familiar as a baby blanket crushed to your nose
and I had totalled his car while he was in the hospital, and I got arrested for shoplifting, my trite cry-for-attention things that weren’t cries for attention, they were all you got, that was all you got was that fugitive feeling of excitement when you stole, you couldn’t even steal anything that mattered but the feeling of stealing that would last for a couple of days, like a good book
Dad was always well-meaning, was that cute Dad figure who made dumb Dad jokes, you would say to him “You’re driving me crazy,” and he’d happily retort “Take the bus!” and used to sing “The Ants Go Marching One by One” and that was what America, I think, meant to people of his kind.
But when it went to shit he had not a thing to say, he was as silent as an egg, gnawed up inside that life had not been what he had every right to expect he was a Jewish engineer, with the government job and married, faithful to his wife and he provided and he learned as an adult to be anti-racist, to consider the other guy’s point of view and to appreciate the right of the Chinese to choose a Communist government because they had problems in our relative affluence we could not hope to understand and he was the nice guy
but when it went to shit
and we were kids and unforgiving
brother Jeff and I never spoke.
When I was thirty one I was doing an office job, the office phone rang. And I was called across the room to it, told by the deputy head it was my brother Jeff. I knew that my father had died.
Then I took the phone and said hi, Jeff.
I went there, Florida my father retired where we were having the funeral and I was the only one who wanted to view the body and I stood alone with my father’s corpse in a big room cheaply carpeted, with small windows like the windows you have in suburban basements, so it was meager underwatery grey light and touched his frozen brow and, cold as water, I got down on my knees and cried from a conditioned reflex triggered when a loved parent dies.
Jeff took the ashes of my father. They were in a black plastic box. It was sealed with wax, and the crematory form was Scotch taped to one side. The name and address of the body were typed in the blanks and in the box, the ashes were in a thick clear plastic bag, with the finest ash smeared more like a liquid yet it rose in the air
when Jeff and I sprinkled it in Chesapeake Bay one Christmas Day. There was a Mexican family laughing coming down to the shore as we walked up from the shore: when they saw us they all stopped talking.
Then we drove back to the city with the radio playing
The Biological Automobile
• ABE: So, you bummed about leaving Clark?
ME: Well…
ABE: Yeah, I’m leaving a lot of shit behind. I guess we’ll look back on that time in Boulder as one of those golden times.
The mountains pass around the car, the sun holds still. Abe has a fluffy toy attached to his rear-view mirror, but I’m too fucked up to notice what it is. I try to let the heat pacify me. At last I cross my arms.
ME: We had to leave.
ABE: It’s just sadness. There’s no other word for it.
ME: Sadness. Luckily it’s a 24-hour flu emotion.
ABE: It’s not anthrax. It feels like anthrax…
• We saw the Weapon of Mass Destruction on the way to Santa Fe. It was far off on a salmon-pink mountainside, glinting. A series of barbed wire fences gave scale. We pulled over and got out of the VW bus to stare and were aware of the desert then as if we’d touched it. The sun shone along like weightless breeze.
We didn’t know what to say about the Weapon, except that when we’d been through the last time, it had not been there.
Abe said, harking back to an earlier conversation: “But what I don’t get is where the scientists get the saccharine molecules to synthesise. Cause all I see is a lot of grass and rocks. I don’t see any saccharine molecules.”
We both looked at the Weapon, precise on the mountain shoulder. I didn’t bug Abe about avoiding the frightening issue, although it upset me and made me feel alone.
ME: Well…
ABE: Yeah, I’m leaving a lot of shit behind. I guess we’ll look back on that time in Boulder as one of those golden times.
The mountains pass around the car, the sun holds still. Abe has a fluffy toy attached to his rear-view mirror, but I’m too fucked up to notice what it is. I try to let the heat pacify me. At last I cross my arms.
ME: We had to leave.
ABE: It’s just sadness. There’s no other word for it.
ME: Sadness. Luckily it’s a 24-hour flu emotion.
ABE: It’s not anthrax. It feels like anthrax…
• We saw the Weapon of Mass Destruction on the way to Santa Fe. It was far off on a salmon-pink mountainside, glinting. A series of barbed wire fences gave scale. We pulled over and got out of the VW bus to stare and were aware of the desert then as if we’d touched it. The sun shone along like weightless breeze.
We didn’t know what to say about the Weapon, except that when we’d been through the last time, it had not been there.
Abe said, harking back to an earlier conversation: “But what I don’t get is where the scientists get the saccharine molecules to synthesise. Cause all I see is a lot of grass and rocks. I don’t see any saccharine molecules.”
We both looked at the Weapon, precise on the mountain shoulder. I didn’t bug Abe about avoiding the frightening issue, although it upset me and made me feel alone.
Love D
My cell phone rang. It was Hamid.
The fact that it was Hamid made me realise Clark Kent was being uptight, I was just playing the diva, my need all waned. It’s easy to get things out of proportion. Love is not really this bad, I realised, and turned from my bachelor as glorious Hamid said
“Doll. I was thinking about you in your leather mini-skirt today, your legs, and a sparrow came and lighted on my knee – this was outdoors – and I realised the day was under your sign so I made tracks for the executive florist, where they fax volcano flowers to rich homosexuals, but they wouldn’t take my credit card because it made the thing put out a piece of paper saying I was Declined and they were morbidly observant. So I’m cast into the darkness where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth and went next door to the pet shop where I bought a lizard.”
“No.” I looked at Clark. “You mean a salamander.”
“What’s the difference? Do they have paws?”
“I don't know.”
“This had paws. It was the size of an iguana, but frillier, and pawed. They wanted to sell me a cat-carrier for it, but I, I do not want to create the appearance of owning cats, or bearing cats from place to place. So I put my lizard in a fish food carton with a starter pack of flies and I went out, and bang, there was the Museum of Natural History.”
“There it was.”
“Well, it’s there. So I went in to see the dinosaurs: you know I am the slave of motif. And two security guards asked to look inside the box. What happened next?
“The lizard ran away.”
“Like lightning. Pow! Pow! I took to my heels. And fleeing made them think that the lizard was a terrorist act and every man jack screamed and stared death in the face. I was quite to blame. And I... by this time it’s night. I think I’ve got the time scheme out.”
“You have... maybe.”
“I rounded a corner, running running and I stopped and then I saw a child pouring red paint into a mudpuddle. And I realised it was you.”
Then he stopped dead and I was hearing his sombre breath.
We went on a long time quiet. I groped for the sheet behind me, getting my bearings. Soon we were breathing in step.
I could hear New York City in his background. Hamid would be sitting in the open window of his Lower East Side apartment, holding the cordless phone in both hands, hunched over it solicitously as if it were wounded – as if listening for the heartbeat of a beloved phone. I imagined the night skyline behind him altered post-Sept 11; the traffic hushed, an intrusive smell of carrion. Ghosts phosphorescent in the upper air.
“Are you all right, there? Are you –?”
“Oh! the usual,” Hamid sniffed. “Homelessness, dispossession, and death.”
“Meaning that you need money?”
“No, I have fucking bags of money. Cartons.”
“Oh, well. So what’s going on?”
There was a long long pause. Clark turned and squinted at me suspiciously. I said, “I’ll have to go soon – Clark’s –”
“No! You’re with a man?” Hamid said, indignant.
Then Hamid and I laughed, laughed and laughed. I couldn’t say... why I couldn’t say, no, no one will ever know what we felt, because we didn’t know, weren’t paying any attention to our feelings, just laughing energetically without normal mirth.
So, we finally stopped.
I said, “But tell me. Whatever, just tell me.”
“I’m coming to see you. I’m wanted by the FBI.”
“Oh, good. Come and see me.”
“Pick me up in Las Vegas,” he said wistfully, as if he wasn’t really leaving New York.
I felt desperate at once. “If only you were wanted by the FBI,” I said.
“Oh, but I am,” he said encouragingly. “You’ll see, it will be a marvellous surprise. I’ll be there in Vegas, they’ll corner us and there will be a bloody mini-war, we’ll die in a fireball.”
“There you go,” I said.
“There you go,” said Hamid. “And I will go, doll. No good-byes.”
I hung up the phone: Clark was lying with his back to me. I lay down with my back to him, very sad.
I fell asleep and dreamed of a pleasant apocalypse.
The fact that it was Hamid made me realise Clark Kent was being uptight, I was just playing the diva, my need all waned. It’s easy to get things out of proportion. Love is not really this bad, I realised, and turned from my bachelor as glorious Hamid said
“Doll. I was thinking about you in your leather mini-skirt today, your legs, and a sparrow came and lighted on my knee – this was outdoors – and I realised the day was under your sign so I made tracks for the executive florist, where they fax volcano flowers to rich homosexuals, but they wouldn’t take my credit card because it made the thing put out a piece of paper saying I was Declined and they were morbidly observant. So I’m cast into the darkness where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth and went next door to the pet shop where I bought a lizard.”
“No.” I looked at Clark. “You mean a salamander.”
“What’s the difference? Do they have paws?”
“I don't know.”
“This had paws. It was the size of an iguana, but frillier, and pawed. They wanted to sell me a cat-carrier for it, but I, I do not want to create the appearance of owning cats, or bearing cats from place to place. So I put my lizard in a fish food carton with a starter pack of flies and I went out, and bang, there was the Museum of Natural History.”
“There it was.”
“Well, it’s there. So I went in to see the dinosaurs: you know I am the slave of motif. And two security guards asked to look inside the box. What happened next?
“The lizard ran away.”
“Like lightning. Pow! Pow! I took to my heels. And fleeing made them think that the lizard was a terrorist act and every man jack screamed and stared death in the face. I was quite to blame. And I... by this time it’s night. I think I’ve got the time scheme out.”
“You have... maybe.”
“I rounded a corner, running running and I stopped and then I saw a child pouring red paint into a mudpuddle. And I realised it was you.”
Then he stopped dead and I was hearing his sombre breath.
We went on a long time quiet. I groped for the sheet behind me, getting my bearings. Soon we were breathing in step.
I could hear New York City in his background. Hamid would be sitting in the open window of his Lower East Side apartment, holding the cordless phone in both hands, hunched over it solicitously as if it were wounded – as if listening for the heartbeat of a beloved phone. I imagined the night skyline behind him altered post-Sept 11; the traffic hushed, an intrusive smell of carrion. Ghosts phosphorescent in the upper air.
“Are you all right, there? Are you –?”
“Oh! the usual,” Hamid sniffed. “Homelessness, dispossession, and death.”
“Meaning that you need money?”
“No, I have fucking bags of money. Cartons.”
“Oh, well. So what’s going on?”
There was a long long pause. Clark turned and squinted at me suspiciously. I said, “I’ll have to go soon – Clark’s –”
“No! You’re with a man?” Hamid said, indignant.
Then Hamid and I laughed, laughed and laughed. I couldn’t say... why I couldn’t say, no, no one will ever know what we felt, because we didn’t know, weren’t paying any attention to our feelings, just laughing energetically without normal mirth.
So, we finally stopped.
I said, “But tell me. Whatever, just tell me.”
“I’m coming to see you. I’m wanted by the FBI.”
“Oh, good. Come and see me.”
“Pick me up in Las Vegas,” he said wistfully, as if he wasn’t really leaving New York.
I felt desperate at once. “If only you were wanted by the FBI,” I said.
“Oh, but I am,” he said encouragingly. “You’ll see, it will be a marvellous surprise. I’ll be there in Vegas, they’ll corner us and there will be a bloody mini-war, we’ll die in a fireball.”
“There you go,” I said.
“There you go,” said Hamid. “And I will go, doll. No good-byes.”
I hung up the phone: Clark was lying with his back to me. I lay down with my back to him, very sad.
I fell asleep and dreamed of a pleasant apocalypse.
Custodians & Giants
I met my imaginary friend, Hamid al Hakim, in London when I was 13. The year was 1976: the bicentennial. That’s many years before I would make it to London in reality.
The day I am pretending to have met Hamid, I had escaped from my parents’ supervision to roam Bloomsbury, happier and happier as night fell. I found my dear imaginary friend in a cul de sac, standing with his chin tipped up, all alone. He stared at the lane of dappled sky above, where the small clouds moved like living beings. Hamid was wearing a sheik outfit, complete with head-dress, and holding a large silver tray of baclava.
Coquettishly arrayed under cellophane, the cakes were pretty in a way I then thought French. Hamid’s robe was short enough to show his neat socks. The shoes were loafers, and visibly expensive – Hamid used to buy everything from Harrod’s, even groceries, in those days, to save bother.
When he saw me, Hamid smiled wolfishly. Then we were friends forevermore.
The day I am pretending to have met Hamid, I had escaped from my parents’ supervision to roam Bloomsbury, happier and happier as night fell. I found my dear imaginary friend in a cul de sac, standing with his chin tipped up, all alone. He stared at the lane of dappled sky above, where the small clouds moved like living beings. Hamid was wearing a sheik outfit, complete with head-dress, and holding a large silver tray of baclava.
Coquettishly arrayed under cellophane, the cakes were pretty in a way I then thought French. Hamid’s robe was short enough to show his neat socks. The shoes were loafers, and visibly expensive – Hamid used to buy everything from Harrod’s, even groceries, in those days, to save bother.
When he saw me, Hamid smiled wolfishly. Then we were friends forevermore.
Points for Comprehension
• I invited Clark to come with me to LA, knowing he wouldn’t. He agonised over his foregone conclusion. Finally, I had to say it on his behalf. We were sitting in his Honda, in a Scenic View parking lot, the greasy styrofoam boxes from our Noodle Express meals crowding our feet, and we cried unhappily, holding hands, like child friends unwillingly parted by a parent’s move.
• The Integral is the god hydraulics pumping us feared things.
• The Integral is the god hydraulics pumping us feared things.
Love C: a version of this scene takes place in a parallel universe dispensed by a vending machine
I’m lying on a log raft beside a giant salamander. A ladykiller in its glossy hide, the beast lounges. It grooms itself fussily, making the raft lurch. Stars go out overhead, the salamander smiles and coughs.
I am a giant beaver, sodden with glue. Everything has stuck to me. I am miserable – clotted, glaucous, stinking. I didn’t even want to be the beaver in this scene.
Around in the parochial bath-warm dirty little sea float hundreds of beds from Clark’s store, all soiled.
We have gone to Video Morass for a video, but only wandered staring at the racks for two hours, depressed, before returning home. Twin tubs of ice cream sit on either side of the raft, empty, each with its smudged spoon. It’s Philandering Walrus, a Ben & Jerry’s flavour so extreme it includes absinthe, child prostitutes, and enriched uranium.
The moon is scuffed plastic. The sky sags, stinking of damp. Although I have run away several times, I only get to other regions of the same degrading scene. Clark runs away, too, but we are always on the raft, it’s night, the light strained, the stale beds rock. Not a breath of wind and
I’m ready to tear my throat out just to make Clark feel bad –
If I can only forget about the salamander utterly, we’ll be freed. I’ll blink and he’ll be a man: I’ll be a tanned girl. We’ll wake in a new meadow, smelling like youth. The flowers will bounce with the weight of bees, the frail grass will vanish and reappear in the sun’s glare. This is how it was meant to be. But I can’t, I can’t forget, I have my own needs and I need them and I didn’t even ask to be the beaver in this scene) when my cellphone rang.
It was Hamid.
I am a giant beaver, sodden with glue. Everything has stuck to me. I am miserable – clotted, glaucous, stinking. I didn’t even want to be the beaver in this scene.
Around in the parochial bath-warm dirty little sea float hundreds of beds from Clark’s store, all soiled.
We have gone to Video Morass for a video, but only wandered staring at the racks for two hours, depressed, before returning home. Twin tubs of ice cream sit on either side of the raft, empty, each with its smudged spoon. It’s Philandering Walrus, a Ben & Jerry’s flavour so extreme it includes absinthe, child prostitutes, and enriched uranium.
The moon is scuffed plastic. The sky sags, stinking of damp. Although I have run away several times, I only get to other regions of the same degrading scene. Clark runs away, too, but we are always on the raft, it’s night, the light strained, the stale beds rock. Not a breath of wind and
I’m ready to tear my throat out just to make Clark feel bad –
If I can only forget about the salamander utterly, we’ll be freed. I’ll blink and he’ll be a man: I’ll be a tanned girl. We’ll wake in a new meadow, smelling like youth. The flowers will bounce with the weight of bees, the frail grass will vanish and reappear in the sun’s glare. This is how it was meant to be. But I can’t, I can’t forget, I have my own needs and I need them and I didn’t even ask to be the beaver in this scene) when my cellphone rang.
It was Hamid.
Love C: 9/20, on the eve of the story, inside night. Clark
hadn’t talked to me for hours – then he wanted to sleep.
I lay there wondering if I was within my rights. I needed something. He had turned out the light without asking me, he had got into bed with his underwear on. He had turned his back. At last I had to bug him, it was one of those “How can you sleep at such a time” lines:
I: “You asked me to tell you if you’d done anything wrong in this relationship. I know this isn’t a good time, but it’s on me now, so I’d really like to talk about this. It’s just that your withdrawal from me, under the circumstances, has been really painful, and –“
CLARK: “It’s my right to withdraw from a relationship if I want
to.”
I began to cry. Because I cried often at that time, it was hideous, not poignant. He looked at the pillow while I cried.
CLARK: “No, Sandy. I’d like to agree with you, but I can’t. I don’t think it would do you any good. I think one of the reasons I’ve withdrawn from you is that you’re so demanding. And it’s strange, because you’re a very independent woman. But your demands for attention, love and protection are so extreme no man could fulfill them. It can only inspire revulsion or domination. And I don’t believe it’s about your divorce.”
I was about to capitulate – yes, I was needy, I was co-dependent – I would thank him for his honesty, his courage in confronting me – he would stroke my face, then, moved – we would have sex – I would fall asleep, demands met –
I lay there wondering if I was within my rights. I needed something. He had turned out the light without asking me, he had got into bed with his underwear on. He had turned his back. At last I had to bug him, it was one of those “How can you sleep at such a time” lines:
I: “You asked me to tell you if you’d done anything wrong in this relationship. I know this isn’t a good time, but it’s on me now, so I’d really like to talk about this. It’s just that your withdrawal from me, under the circumstances, has been really painful, and –“
CLARK: “It’s my right to withdraw from a relationship if I want
to.”
I began to cry. Because I cried often at that time, it was hideous, not poignant. He looked at the pillow while I cried.
CLARK: “No, Sandy. I’d like to agree with you, but I can’t. I don’t think it would do you any good. I think one of the reasons I’ve withdrawn from you is that you’re so demanding. And it’s strange, because you’re a very independent woman. But your demands for attention, love and protection are so extreme no man could fulfill them. It can only inspire revulsion or domination. And I don’t believe it’s about your divorce.”
I was about to capitulate – yes, I was needy, I was co-dependent – I would thank him for his honesty, his courage in confronting me – he would stroke my face, then, moved – we would have sex – I would fall asleep, demands met –
Points for Comprehension (The Ruby-headed Koresh)
• I say: “Oh, my God. This is a note from Hamid.”
• Three days later, I was in Abe’s ’72 Volkswagen bus, Ticolote, heading West.
• Three days later, I was in Abe’s ’72 Volkswagen bus, Ticolote, heading West.
Penny Lane: Poor Little Sparrow, Bye Bye
Abe is staring out at the street, at the space where Clark’s Honda has just pulled away. He says, “You could always ask Dad for the money.”
I say, “I don’t want to ask Dad for more money. After this year, I’ve run through so much of his money.”
“Yeah, but that’s how you feel about it. That’s not how Dad feels about it. He’s got bags of money.”
“I was thinking I might come with you to LA and stay.”
Abe starts. His black eyes quicken and warm. He licks his lips. “Are you serious? Then you and me and Rosa could get a place together. That would be great. You should do it. You should just do it. Ask Dad for some money, he’d be thrilled to have you in town. You should do it.”
Glancing at the now untenanted fig tree, I have a twinge of memory, although, in my mind, the sparrow’s turned into a grisly bat. I want to leave town pretty badly. I say, “This Integral thing.”
“Yeah? I don’t think Dad’s going to let you stay there.”
“No, I was telling you, I had this dream.”
I tell him my nuclear war dream, adding a chase scene with “Custodians” I’d forgotten up to now. I tell him I often have apocalypse dreams, because I once had obsessive fears that there was going to be a nuclear war. This was a good dream though, and the Integral seemed like the factor making the nuclear war all right. I expound:
“It was a dream where the one thing you yearn for, the meaningful thing, is presented in an image, and you wake up with that longing?”
Abe is watching my face with the cloudless sincerity of a good dog. He says, “Yeah, you’re so lucky to have one of those dreams. I haven’t had one of those in...”
We instrospect; we both stop and look at the mountains outside. The clean air is present as if it had cleared its voice and spoken.
From Penny Lane’s window, you can see where the Rockies’ Front Range goes in leaps to the far snow mountains. The view is dominated by the FlatIrons, three dramatic crests of red stone. Today the needled shoulders of Chautauqua are crisply in focus in the dry air, the vista has a clarity like the frank scent of pine. It is a scene that promises, free-handed like American…
“Why are we looking at the mountains? That’s so cheesy,” Abe says.
“Longing.” I intone.
“Exactly.” He starts sweeping up his crumbs with a leave-taking air. “Yeah, I don’t know if Dad’s pool house is the one thing you long for. I guess it’s the one thing a lot of people long for, especially in LA. That’s the thing about LA, people’s dreams are so degraded there, it’s like, yuck. A lotta yucky fucking people. It’s – WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?”
There’s shrieking from behind the bar: I follow Abe’s eyes to the juicer, where a coffee bar girl stands with her hands to her mouth. They’re spattered red, and at first I think she’s lost a finger in the machine.
It’s the sparrow: he’s dive-bombed in, going after some wheatgrass or beet which struck him as a foodstuff. Seizing it just as the girl pressed the ON switch, he was tugged into the centrifuge, sending up a spray of blood, beet-juice, and feathers.
The feathers drift down through the air, in no hurry. In the juicer, the sparrow still faintly kicks.
“That’s creepy. That is awful,” says Abe. “I can’t believe we just let that happen. Fucking Isidore... is that our fault?” He looks at me and I look back at him, reviewing the events. He concludes, “It’s kind of our fault. Shit. I hate that.”
We look down at the table. I think about Afghanistan. Then I think of other wounded things and people, following my sad mood.
The table is covered in yellow cheesecloth which is held in place by a slab of glass cut to fit. Under the glass flyers are displayed. One sheet, hand-printed on yellow lined paper, makes me start; it is headed with my name.
I say, “I don’t want to ask Dad for more money. After this year, I’ve run through so much of his money.”
“Yeah, but that’s how you feel about it. That’s not how Dad feels about it. He’s got bags of money.”
“I was thinking I might come with you to LA and stay.”
Abe starts. His black eyes quicken and warm. He licks his lips. “Are you serious? Then you and me and Rosa could get a place together. That would be great. You should do it. You should just do it. Ask Dad for some money, he’d be thrilled to have you in town. You should do it.”
Glancing at the now untenanted fig tree, I have a twinge of memory, although, in my mind, the sparrow’s turned into a grisly bat. I want to leave town pretty badly. I say, “This Integral thing.”
“Yeah? I don’t think Dad’s going to let you stay there.”
“No, I was telling you, I had this dream.”
I tell him my nuclear war dream, adding a chase scene with “Custodians” I’d forgotten up to now. I tell him I often have apocalypse dreams, because I once had obsessive fears that there was going to be a nuclear war. This was a good dream though, and the Integral seemed like the factor making the nuclear war all right. I expound:
“It was a dream where the one thing you yearn for, the meaningful thing, is presented in an image, and you wake up with that longing?”
Abe is watching my face with the cloudless sincerity of a good dog. He says, “Yeah, you’re so lucky to have one of those dreams. I haven’t had one of those in...”
We instrospect; we both stop and look at the mountains outside. The clean air is present as if it had cleared its voice and spoken.
From Penny Lane’s window, you can see where the Rockies’ Front Range goes in leaps to the far snow mountains. The view is dominated by the FlatIrons, three dramatic crests of red stone. Today the needled shoulders of Chautauqua are crisply in focus in the dry air, the vista has a clarity like the frank scent of pine. It is a scene that promises, free-handed like American…
“Why are we looking at the mountains? That’s so cheesy,” Abe says.
“Longing.” I intone.
“Exactly.” He starts sweeping up his crumbs with a leave-taking air. “Yeah, I don’t know if Dad’s pool house is the one thing you long for. I guess it’s the one thing a lot of people long for, especially in LA. That’s the thing about LA, people’s dreams are so degraded there, it’s like, yuck. A lotta yucky fucking people. It’s – WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?”
There’s shrieking from behind the bar: I follow Abe’s eyes to the juicer, where a coffee bar girl stands with her hands to her mouth. They’re spattered red, and at first I think she’s lost a finger in the machine.
It’s the sparrow: he’s dive-bombed in, going after some wheatgrass or beet which struck him as a foodstuff. Seizing it just as the girl pressed the ON switch, he was tugged into the centrifuge, sending up a spray of blood, beet-juice, and feathers.
The feathers drift down through the air, in no hurry. In the juicer, the sparrow still faintly kicks.
“That’s creepy. That is awful,” says Abe. “I can’t believe we just let that happen. Fucking Isidore... is that our fault?” He looks at me and I look back at him, reviewing the events. He concludes, “It’s kind of our fault. Shit. I hate that.”
We look down at the table. I think about Afghanistan. Then I think of other wounded things and people, following my sad mood.
The table is covered in yellow cheesecloth which is held in place by a slab of glass cut to fit. Under the glass flyers are displayed. One sheet, hand-printed on yellow lined paper, makes me start; it is headed with my name.
Love B: Ivorce
During my painful divorce, the one who saved me was Hamid al Kadin, my imaginary friend. I mention him because he is important to the plot. In chapters to come, Clark Kent shrinks, seen with chilling realism as an insignificant ant: forgotten, he is finally expunged from the world. Hamid saves my life.
In the saving process I must make a bargain with the devil that will rob me of my human semblance. The human semblance part is a matter of opinion. Either way it is Hamid’s doing.
When my marriage broke up, I was living in London, my home for many years. Hamid would come to my flat to cheer me. He once brought a puppy he had borrowed for the afternoon. I still wear a raincoat he stole for me then from a ridiculous boutique. He made me a compilation cd of maudlin love songs, that becomes funny by the third song, that makes “Love Hurts” the funniest thing in all the world. When I’d stopped eating, he and my friend C would cook me the meals one ate in London then – pasta dishes with stir-fried vegetables; chile from scratch; or dishes from cookbooks that one made with an air of rediscovering simple joys, being humble and human (“I shall make macaroni and cheese from scratch,” one would then think, amazed one had that power) – and pour me cheap red wine. We three sat in the kitchen till all hours. There would be a starry smell from the overgrown back garden, where long grass smelled starry and was the haunt of foxes. Hamid would let me talk about my aivorce, bivorce, civorce, which had become every aspect of the world. The grass was the grass I smelled during my divorce, and wine was the red wine we drank during my eivorce. Big Brother was what was on tv during my fivorce. That’s enough; we have now exhausted interest in my zivorce.
When I decided to go to Colorado, Hamid returned to his life in New York. We fell out of touch. We were seldom in touch during my adult state; it had been years since Hamid al Kalil and I were close. It is like “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Dragons live forever, but not so little boys. I had grown out of imaginary friends and saw Hamid only when I was fallen on hard times, when I regressed, like in the ivorce. His other friends behaved the same, foul-weather friends, of which we will have much to say.
He is a dashing man with olive skin, sloe eyes, the keen face of a leopard. Hamid wears perfect suits and snow white shirts. And Hamid can fly. And Hamid has learned the trick of producing coins from his ear. A lot of how we killed time was him teaching me how to pull coins from my ear, during my
In the saving process I must make a bargain with the devil that will rob me of my human semblance. The human semblance part is a matter of opinion. Either way it is Hamid’s doing.
When my marriage broke up, I was living in London, my home for many years. Hamid would come to my flat to cheer me. He once brought a puppy he had borrowed for the afternoon. I still wear a raincoat he stole for me then from a ridiculous boutique. He made me a compilation cd of maudlin love songs, that becomes funny by the third song, that makes “Love Hurts” the funniest thing in all the world. When I’d stopped eating, he and my friend C would cook me the meals one ate in London then – pasta dishes with stir-fried vegetables; chile from scratch; or dishes from cookbooks that one made with an air of rediscovering simple joys, being humble and human (“I shall make macaroni and cheese from scratch,” one would then think, amazed one had that power) – and pour me cheap red wine. We three sat in the kitchen till all hours. There would be a starry smell from the overgrown back garden, where long grass smelled starry and was the haunt of foxes. Hamid would let me talk about my aivorce, bivorce, civorce, which had become every aspect of the world. The grass was the grass I smelled during my divorce, and wine was the red wine we drank during my eivorce. Big Brother was what was on tv during my fivorce. That’s enough; we have now exhausted interest in my zivorce.
When I decided to go to Colorado, Hamid returned to his life in New York. We fell out of touch. We were seldom in touch during my adult state; it had been years since Hamid al Kalil and I were close. It is like “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Dragons live forever, but not so little boys. I had grown out of imaginary friends and saw Hamid only when I was fallen on hard times, when I regressed, like in the ivorce. His other friends behaved the same, foul-weather friends, of which we will have much to say.
He is a dashing man with olive skin, sloe eyes, the keen face of a leopard. Hamid wears perfect suits and snow white shirts. And Hamid can fly. And Hamid has learned the trick of producing coins from his ear. A lot of how we killed time was him teaching me how to pull coins from my ear, during my
Points for Comprehension
• I came to Boulder for the summer to recover from a painful divorce: Abe had a room free in his shared house. It seemed sensible to get away from familiar scenes. Two weeks later, I met Clark Kent.
• The Integral is a ziggurat, not a Japanese poolhouse.
• The Integral is a ziggurat, not a Japanese poolhouse.
Penny Lane
The remaining brim of Abe’s pastry sprawls on his plate. I pick it up and eat it without asking, to assert love. It instantly creates a warm, familial intimacy. I think, this is how it would be, in LA.
Abe says: “I like the way you just take that.” Then, “Hey, did you see Dad’s Integral yet?”
I freeze. “No – what do you mean, his Integral?”
“Isn’t that what it’s called?”
“Is it a ziggurat?”
“I don’t know.”
He grabs Clark’s pen and unfolds a napkin. I watch his hand possessively as he draws a pool house.
“That’s a pool house,” I object, disgusted.
“No, the other one’s the pool house. Maybe I drew the pool house by mistake. Whatever.”
He tosses the pen at Clark. Clark catches the pen in mid-air and Abe says, “Reflexes. All right.”
I say, “I had a dream about an Integral last night.”
“This is something Japanese, like a shrine Dad’s building to work in. I don’t know if it’s a ziggybok. Maybe if you tell Dad you dreamed about it, he’ll let us live there. Not.”
Clark gathers his things, getting ready to leave for his job at the bed store. Bending over my chair from behind, he embraces me, whispering “I love you,” non-commitally into my hair. I listen to the words intently, wondering if they’re true. I feel amorous and sickened at the same time. I wish he’d stay. “I love you too,” I say, but he isn’t listening because he believes me.
He goes off to his beds. I relax and feel magnificent.
Abe says: “I like the way you just take that.” Then, “Hey, did you see Dad’s Integral yet?”
I freeze. “No – what do you mean, his Integral?”
“Isn’t that what it’s called?”
“Is it a ziggurat?”
“I don’t know.”
He grabs Clark’s pen and unfolds a napkin. I watch his hand possessively as he draws a pool house.
“That’s a pool house,” I object, disgusted.
“No, the other one’s the pool house. Maybe I drew the pool house by mistake. Whatever.”
He tosses the pen at Clark. Clark catches the pen in mid-air and Abe says, “Reflexes. All right.”
I say, “I had a dream about an Integral last night.”
“This is something Japanese, like a shrine Dad’s building to work in. I don’t know if it’s a ziggybok. Maybe if you tell Dad you dreamed about it, he’ll let us live there. Not.”
Clark gathers his things, getting ready to leave for his job at the bed store. Bending over my chair from behind, he embraces me, whispering “I love you,” non-commitally into my hair. I listen to the words intently, wondering if they’re true. I feel amorous and sickened at the same time. I wish he’d stay. “I love you too,” I say, but he isn’t listening because he believes me.
He goes off to his beds. I relax and feel magnificent.
Love A
He is tall, dark and handsome; all the girls love Clark. “But we’ll forgive him that,” said my friend A once, and my friend B chipped in that she, too, once dated a very handsome man. “He trotted,” she imparted, and dimpled, mischievous. Clark doesn’t trot, but does wear himself consciously: as if in costume as a tall, dark, handsome man.
He’s from a nice family from a humourless corn state. In his town, the Pumpkin Queen wept as she was crowned. He felt out of place, he was not one of the popular kids. His best friend was his chemical dependency counsellor, a penniless obese man with a great soul.
He has favourite Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Burger King orders. Most meals he eats in his car, among his dirty clothes. One year he lived in the bed store where he works. I asked him if he slept on a different bed every night, and he allowed as he had his favourites. To me (although it wasn’t) it sounds like heaven. I always wished he would move back to the bed store.
Often his nice face narrows in thought – he is visibly then a nerd. He looks uncomfortably wet, his thinning hair is suddenly noticeable. He is pointy, like a peevish snapping turtle. Then he will again grin and become a heartthrob.
He studied martial arts for four years; he had a talent. He still moves elegantly, fluidly, and fast. When he jokingly threatens to kick a guy’s ass, the guy mock-backs down, miming fear. “Whoa!” says the guy, putting his hands up. Then everyone laughs like an excitedly barking dog.
He doesn’t know what he wants to be, but he is 30. Every day he burns with this embarrassing passing time. In this sleepy mountain town, he is a type of sleeping beauty: men in thrall to the boy who is not good enough to grow into the man the boy expected to be.
He’s from a nice family from a humourless corn state. In his town, the Pumpkin Queen wept as she was crowned. He felt out of place, he was not one of the popular kids. His best friend was his chemical dependency counsellor, a penniless obese man with a great soul.
He has favourite Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Burger King orders. Most meals he eats in his car, among his dirty clothes. One year he lived in the bed store where he works. I asked him if he slept on a different bed every night, and he allowed as he had his favourites. To me (although it wasn’t) it sounds like heaven. I always wished he would move back to the bed store.
Often his nice face narrows in thought – he is visibly then a nerd. He looks uncomfortably wet, his thinning hair is suddenly noticeable. He is pointy, like a peevish snapping turtle. Then he will again grin and become a heartthrob.
He studied martial arts for four years; he had a talent. He still moves elegantly, fluidly, and fast. When he jokingly threatens to kick a guy’s ass, the guy mock-backs down, miming fear. “Whoa!” says the guy, putting his hands up. Then everyone laughs like an excitedly barking dog.
He doesn’t know what he wants to be, but he is 30. Every day he burns with this embarrassing passing time. In this sleepy mountain town, he is a type of sleeping beauty: men in thrall to the boy who is not good enough to grow into the man the boy expected to be.
Introduction
This story is for white people, not for black people. It addresses white people’s problems and makes jokes only they find amusing. All proceeds from this book will go to white people, except where otherwise indicated.
Black people are invited to read this as escapism. It is hoped they may adopt an attitude of voyeurism towards the trials and sufferings of the white characters.
Right now this book is for my white bachelor, Clark Kent.
Black people are invited to read this as escapism. It is hoped they may adopt an attitude of voyeurism towards the trials and sufferings of the white characters.
Right now this book is for my white bachelor, Clark Kent.
Points for Comprehension
• The Integral is the factory that makes significance.
• All the people named in the above scene are white.
• All the people named in the above scene are white.
Entrance
My brother Abe Grossman comes in and makes his way towards us, greeting one person after another with the glib assurance of a slumming celebrity. Brown and handsome, he is pint-sized on the other hand. A body-builder, Abe walks strangely, as if ever straddling a stick horse.
Sitting down with us, he holds forth.
Abe is glad our government is bombing Afghanistan, cause if it had been someone he loved in those towers, and that’s all these people understand. Clark chimes in, opining fiercely that we’ve parachuted Delta Force guys into Afghanistan weeks ago; these guys have been conducting special ops. If you killed every last Al Qaeda member, they say, vociferous, that would be self-defence.
Meanwhile our government is dropping bombs all over Afghanistan, in fact.
I sit back, aware that both believe they’re arguing against me. I want to proclaim that I’m in favour of any war, anywhere, as long as it kills lots of people and excites me. I picture Afghan villagers, standing in rice paddies, looking up in apprehension, each with his Labrador. I picture black shapes falling slowly through the air.
Just then a sparrow flies in and stops, like a blur coalescing to a point, in a potted fig tree. It fidgets, unnerved, but soon is calmed by the familiar leaves. Abe, Clark, and I shut up to peer at it, concerned. Penny Lane’s owner, Isidore, is passing, and Abe points the sparrow out.
Isidore says he will get Colin Powell to send a Sidewinder missile to deal with the sparrow. We look at Isidore non-commitally, as if he hasn’t made a joke. Then Clark, Abe, Isidore, and I forget about the bird. Isidore walks away.
We begin to really breakfast.
Abe has bought a Danish the size of a hat. He tears it to pieces and talks about leaving town. He’s moving to LA to pursue his career as a singer-songwriter. When he first arrives, he will stay with our father and stepmother in the mansion. Because Clark’s parents, too, live in a mansion, this passes without comment.
Abe then suggests that I come along with him for the drive, to visit family.
Sitting down with us, he holds forth.
Abe is glad our government is bombing Afghanistan, cause if it had been someone he loved in those towers, and that’s all these people understand. Clark chimes in, opining fiercely that we’ve parachuted Delta Force guys into Afghanistan weeks ago; these guys have been conducting special ops. If you killed every last Al Qaeda member, they say, vociferous, that would be self-defence.
Meanwhile our government is dropping bombs all over Afghanistan, in fact.
I sit back, aware that both believe they’re arguing against me. I want to proclaim that I’m in favour of any war, anywhere, as long as it kills lots of people and excites me. I picture Afghan villagers, standing in rice paddies, looking up in apprehension, each with his Labrador. I picture black shapes falling slowly through the air.
Just then a sparrow flies in and stops, like a blur coalescing to a point, in a potted fig tree. It fidgets, unnerved, but soon is calmed by the familiar leaves. Abe, Clark, and I shut up to peer at it, concerned. Penny Lane’s owner, Isidore, is passing, and Abe points the sparrow out.
Isidore says he will get Colin Powell to send a Sidewinder missile to deal with the sparrow. We look at Isidore non-commitally, as if he hasn’t made a joke. Then Clark, Abe, Isidore, and I forget about the bird. Isidore walks away.
We begin to really breakfast.
Abe has bought a Danish the size of a hat. He tears it to pieces and talks about leaving town. He’s moving to LA to pursue his career as a singer-songwriter. When he first arrives, he will stay with our father and stepmother in the mansion. Because Clark’s parents, too, live in a mansion, this passes without comment.
Abe then suggests that I come along with him for the drive, to visit family.
Penny Lane
Clark and I choose a table near the bar and sit in dilapidated, mismatched armchairs. Clark is writing his AA inventory, making lists of things he has resented in the past so in future he will be a good person. I am reading in the New York Times about a man who, trapped in the World Trade Center just before it collapsed, was miraculously saved by his Labrador Retriever, Buck. He and Buck are pictured with a lifetime supply of Purina Dog Chow and mayor Rudy Giuliani. We’ve bought a delicious scone to share, but until Clark starts to eat, I can’t. The scone stares on its plate.
There are beginning to be too many flies at Penny Lane: it is part of a downward slide occurring at about this time. The hippie art – exploring the themes of Buddha, the Coca-Cola logo, and pendulous boobs – feels asinine these days, not heartwarming. In the display case, Annie’s Bodhi Brownies are on sale, alongside prayer bowls and talking sticks by local artists, now inspiring weariness. Food and objects alike are chunky, inexpertly made, like Neanderthal knock-offs of human merchandise.
We come here every morning. Each day we enter at a lower level, as if reality is being diluted by a cheating tradesman. Today the sun is weak, the carpet soiled – but people look drowsy and affectionate still, one strong coffee might make it all right.
It is ten days after September 11th. There exists the possibility September 11th has altered the nature of reality. It may not be simple “media hysteria”.
There are beginning to be too many flies at Penny Lane: it is part of a downward slide occurring at about this time. The hippie art – exploring the themes of Buddha, the Coca-Cola logo, and pendulous boobs – feels asinine these days, not heartwarming. In the display case, Annie’s Bodhi Brownies are on sale, alongside prayer bowls and talking sticks by local artists, now inspiring weariness. Food and objects alike are chunky, inexpertly made, like Neanderthal knock-offs of human merchandise.
We come here every morning. Each day we enter at a lower level, as if reality is being diluted by a cheating tradesman. Today the sun is weak, the carpet soiled – but people look drowsy and affectionate still, one strong coffee might make it all right.
It is ten days after September 11th. There exists the possibility September 11th has altered the nature of reality. It may not be simple “media hysteria”.
while dressing
We’re living not in London but in Boulder, Colorado, a sanitised college town like every other such town with its anaesthetised, anodyne folk. There are gabled homes and affluent hippies. Its socks are Banana Republic, its cops blond – even the Latino community recycles. It’s so alas unlike a city where the Integral could be, on the muddy banks of a pretty and be-crocodiled river decked with pointy canoes, reminiscent of the sultry realm of Cheops.
As we reach the coffee shop, my hopeful thought of raspberry scones is darkened by foreboding: I am about to leave town.
As we reach the coffee shop, my hopeful thought of raspberry scones is darkened by foreboding: I am about to leave town.
9/21/2001: 6:58 AM
Coming home along the Thames, through dense jungle, we pass a pink-and-green ziggurat called The Integral, of whose uncanny workings none dares tell. It’s the new seat of government – but also a religious machine.
9/21/2001: 6:57 AM
The streets are deserted – it’s just like Christmas. The corner shop now sells high quality organic beef at reasonable prices, from the freezer which once housed ice cream bars.
9/21/2001: 6:56 AM
At last we emerge to discover the economy’s collapsed, leaving Earth in a state of primaeval barbary.
We go off straight away to buy lunch, in high spirits.
We go off straight away to buy lunch, in high spirits.
9/21/2001: 6:55 AM
The flat has a disheartening, pea-coloured carpet, but we keep busy with little chores – that helps.
9/21/2001: 6:54 AM
It’s intimate. We grow close, telling stories.
The floor trembles with the biological explosions: we listen to Radio 4 and eat tinned soup.
The floor trembles with the biological explosions: we listen to Radio 4 and eat tinned soup.
9/21/2001: 6:53 AM
My friends and I shelter in a basement in West London, hoping to weather the world’s end.
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