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Friends of
The Brain |
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| Ill Confesio iv. continued from front page. |
by randy stainer
I. Too much with the world
Too much material. CHALK TALK chalked on a parking
garage overhang. Nirvana, Zeppelin,
and Motley Crue reversing a descent into your own
private Marianas Trench. The subtleties of your
amiable slavery to cigarettes. Shocked rollerblading
girls as your large body, wild hair exits a car
with a friendly hello. Someone who scares the shit
out of you when, politely, he pardons himself for
passing you. Retarded babies left in the sand by
tongue-clicking nomadic tribes in Chad. The rest
and its -- perhaps -- infinite logistical variation
and interpretation. Everything else is pedagogy
(and winnowing the physical
evidence to its elements and mechanisms).
So a story.
She was twenty, adrift in a poverty that at the
least she found strange. She'd been irritated by
mysterious abrasions on the gums behind her emerging
wisdom teeth. They knocked her out and removed the
offending
teeth. They gave her a rubber glove full of
ice cubes, some advice on the packing wads, and
sent her on her way. Her mom took her home and took
care of her and she got dry sockets.
He was twenty-one, adrift in a more profound poverty
-- and one of his own makings -- than even he was
raised in. He still took care of his teeth: raised
right, dignified indigence, self-perceived as a
good Irish
boy who did some strange and morally dubious
things for his own amusement or out of an unperceived
sense of indignant self-righteousness. He'd been
irritated by mysterious abrasions on the gums behind
his functional third
molars. He wanted a local so he could have at
least an audio/visual perspective on this event.
Perhaps some conversation. The doctor, while straddling
his chest and twisting a pliers-thing mightily,
told him to thank his mother and father after the
operation for giving him such strong teeth. They
made him watch a movie on his packing wads and post-surgical
care. Then the nurse gave him a rubber glove< that
had been filled with water and frozen. He held it
on his face and walked a mile to the BART. He held
his melting cold hand on his face across the bay;
passengers thought him affected, trying to get attention.
He walked two miles into Oakland before it was just
wet
rubber. He pureed muesli with milk and he blended
pea soup and he drank a chocolate shake as his roommates
prepared for an Ecstasy-addled weekend at the beach.
He watched movies that he'd been told were important
to see, like Citizen
Kane , and he got a throat infection from icing
too much and he cracked and wept for hours in self-pity.
He unpacked the gory wads and took codeine more
for kicks than alleviation.
II. Let's go forward to see more clearly the past
He pulled up to his home after leaving work early
on a sunny day, having fetched flowers from the
Daley Center farmer's market. His new possibility
was in her SUV, looking at his apartment window,
with a friend, talking about him. She saw him and
got out of the thing. She ran over to his Sonata
and kissed him through the open window. Very thin
lips make insubstantial kisses. Like kissing a flexed
elbow. One of his purchases was a bundle of sunflowers.
She asked if they were for her. He said they were
for her; it only seemed right. Right because she
was a sunflower lady and right because she asked.
She asked whose were the other flowers. He said
they were for his mother, when they were only for
her. The sunflowers had been for his engaged lover.
But multiple love is flexible.
He
asked if she cared to see him later. She said
"that would be oKay." Emphasis on the kay. Bubbly,
sunny, well read, fake blonde hair, a big drinker,
very little bullshit. She was a delight, though
her mom was a bit homely. And she
resembled her mom, before obesity
and disappointment and a furry mole, and her
family had money. She wouldn't do for forever, though
she did for forever-for-now. And if the sunflowers
had been for her, who knows what she or he would
have been.
He said that he would come to Goose Island around
ten for some beers. He had ten or so beers and they
screwed sloppy and stupid. She
gave head poorly, yet with vigor, and her mouth
tasted like sour milk. She delighted in sunflowers.
Next week, III. That's not working; back to the
past
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