One would think I would have left as soon as I walked in, and saw what that man was about, with his crazy ideas of conceptual art. But I didn’t. And it wasn’t out of hope, that I stayed… or love, not then; or even desperation. The truth is there was nothing so noble that drove me into that hell-hole. It was shock, and awe, and morbid fascination. And I am so ashamed.
And I’ve suddenly realized you will never believe this. All of it. But you need to. Because it is true. And because I will never free myself from the past if it is not believed in… and could you treasure it? because maybe it needs to be treasured.
My poet’s apartment always smelled like paint. I think it was a mixture of the blood and the narcotics that lay puddled in the cracks in the floor; heroin and turpentine and things that lose their minds inside the bloodstream, that flood your own mind in effort to reclaim what is rightfully their’s. They say you could get high from walking on his ground, from the cracks in your feet splitting into blood, from the blood meeting the intoxication that thrived between the floorboards.
A lot of poets contracted AIDs inside his apartment. It’s really a good thing I always wore my socks.
(and condoms).
And I think my visions of feet pajamas were my vague attempts at salvation. I was like the woman who flails her arms to save herself from the shark, when he is already upon her. My dreams were flailing little wills to protect his feet, to save his blood, to save his mind, his immunities, his dead best friends. I have just realized this now.
And I am ashamed. I want to banish that noble calling of shame from the faces of the earth, forever. But shame makes me immobile, makes me hopeless. Not even the murderers deserve to be ashamed. or maybe only the murderers. But not the bad children, or the ugly people, or the whores.
I’m listening to shitty kind of new rock music on the radio. I can’t tell if it’s mostly static or if it’s supposed to be like that. Whatever happened to rock and roll? I am ashamed of the generation we have produced. I am ashamed of what all the dead have done in their collective copulation. Because, somehow, it devolved to this. If Einstein had had children it would have been different. The gene pool is what needs this generations’ “technological advances,” not fucking cell phones. and they’re too arrogant to notice. Whatever happened to rock and roll? And I am not ashamed of them for their music. I’m not really ashamed of them at all. Well, maybe a little. But mostly, I’m ashamed of myself for understanding this shit, for being perfectly familiar with the ignorant righteousness, with the instinctual indignation; It’s that sense that you’re born with that life just isn’t fair, but that it’s worthy of your anger…and later, of your shame.
I am so ashamed. My entire life, I have lived wrong. Half the time I knew it and did it anyway because it was easier.
I fucked my poet. You probably guessed. This is like the plot of a movie my brother would boycott. A movie where the audience has been holding its breath, for the predictable attainment of the cliché dream. It’s kind of like sex, all over after the orgasm. Our friendship went kind of like that, it really did. The only thing keeping us happy was the anticipation of the obvious.
The problem was I overstayed the anticipation.
Shit. Is counter-culture poet sex really that predictable? Let’s wax-poetic: Our jazz blood, just about busting through our HIV-infused veins, sinew on starving sinew. Alcohol breathing down the neck, remorselessly.
It’s like a movie my brother would make. To him, as long as it’s counter-culture, it loses that cliché factor that he’s so against. Problem is, he’s wrong. It’s like the grass-roots governor campaign he was so keen on running….and so keen on filming. He does documentaries. They’re bullshit, though, completely contrived.
So I ran for governor. And the upshot was I didn’t even make it to the ballot. My campaign slogan was: The best of both words: famous name, but the heart of an average Joe. The whole campaign was run out of Wal-Mart, because my brother works at Wal-Mart. He gained some converts, though… not to me, but to atheism. And I’ve decided that I kind of hope he’s wrong about there being no god….just for the look on god’s face, just to put the fear of god into him, just because he could use it.
Christ, I sound like an old man.

In case you were wondering, I never thought that I was gay…I never thought that I was anything like that. I never gave a damn.
I think my brother thought that he was gay for a while. He’s hinted at it vaguely in our awkward “getting to know each other” phone calls, oddly reminiscent of conversations with girls I was dating in high school. It was that same rush to pour your life through the phone line, without seeming too over-eager. Sometimes, I could see my brother’s whole life, whizzing towards me, in the phone line, through some town in east Nebraska.
And so my brother hinted awkwardly at some struggle with some sexual identity or other. And I remained silent. Truth is I remained silent through much of our conversations. Truth is I wasn’t trying to pour my life through a wire. I was just listening, just breathing on the other end, unknowingly but unabashedly inspiring unease or acceptance. I just listened.
And my brother knows almost nothing about me.
He doesn’t know my race or my dad’s real last name.
He doesn’t know any of it.
The truth is I don’t really like my brother, but I’m sorry about that. But I don’t know why.
In the AARP magazine that is delivered to my house every month since I’ve been of age, they mention “curmudgeons“. and, I, this 50-some ought year-old didn’t know what a curmudgeon was. It’s a funny word, though. It sounds like a butter substitute.
So now that I’ve read the article, I think I’m a curmudgeon. And maybe that’s the only reason I dislike him.
I generally toss it up to his pretentious artist bullshit. But I’ve been there too. I’ve dressed in all black or nothing and had orgies with men in Greenwich village.


- posted by Joe @ 10.10.03

Labels: By Ana