Sink

Sink

The SINK itself is okay; just a little too small. Like the COUNTERS. Too small. Like the apartment. Too small. I wish I could be a person with no things, enjoying a simplistic life. I long for having no things the way some people long for sexual freedom or coolness or style. Having no things! Delicious. That, that would be happiness, that is the stop I want to get off at on the train: Nothingshamshire. I will be an elegant lady with a small, thin bag and free arms and a coat with an classic line and a soap that works as a shampoo and a conditioner that is lotion and I will be radiant and my flat surfaces will have no piles and my house will look like a cell in a convent.

But I have many things, and they need places. Under the SINK is stuffed with things that I think I may need sometime, and every six months or so I need something deep back there. Under the SINK: constantly smelly, and sometimes when I do dishes I feel phantom tiny fairy splashes of water on my legs that must be coming from under the SINK and through the two cabinets. I don’t manage to ever take everything out from under the SINK and check, because that would be reinforcing the madness, and this isn’t actually happening.

Until I saw it happen to someone else. (I still haven’t done anything about it.)

I also fear there are CRITTERS under there, making love, leaving smaller CRITTERS under there. This cannot be confirmed. Plausible deniability of CRITTERS keeps SINK exploration at a minimum.

While looking for a new place to live, I collected pictures from apartment listings. I cannot explain them. My favorite was the picture that seemed to say, This is what this apartment would look like if you were on too much acid and you were stuck to the SINK. We never looked at that apartment.

Ass

Ass

My ASS was great once. Boys would turn and look at my ASS when I walked by. In my MIND’S EYE, I see the entire scene as a diorama in a shoebox, or a crane shot, starting on my ASS, in tight on my loose booty, then on the boys as they snap their necks trying to see my ASS, and pulling up over the fountain in the center of the community college campus as I go to my class in the library at night school.

It was a great ASS then. All Pow! and out there, shelf-like and round. Very much a Black girl’s ASS. Instead of an average what-is-she-I-think-she’s-Latina-and-stuck-up-and-that’s-why-she-doesn’t-respond-to-Spanish-the-bitch-Hey-Bitch-I’m-talking-at-you ASS.

It was after I lost the weight. My perfect ASS was. Before I lost all of it, and before I gained some back. It came on so suddenly, the first sixty pounds in two months, then two years as a FAT girl, and then it scuttled off almost as fast as I gained it. But for a minute or two, I had an ideal ASS, one that got me noticed from behind.

My ASS doesn’t match my rack any more. I have large BREASTS and when my ASS was perfect, I was like a fucking cartoon character, I swear. Like something Ralph Bashki or John Kricfalusi would draw. If they drew brown girls. They don’t, unless we have BONES in our noses. But for a moment. I swear. In my MIND, I swear that’s how that lost time was, for two whole days, the best ASS ever. Hi-yah! BODY karate.

There is no one to share the mourning of a lost ASS with. There are no votive candles, no Patron Saint of the Lost ASS. No number of Hail Marys. I just feel the ENVY when I see the people, girls and boys both, who have the better badonkadonk than I and know that used to be me. For two days in 2002, that was me.

Books

Books

I don’t like telling people what my BOOKS are. It feels private. I prefer to be seen reading trashy BOOKS. When I am seen reading a highbrow or fancy or classic BOOK, I end up meeting people I don’t want to meet. The time I decided to read Frankenstein at the pharmacy, I was interrupted by a man who I thought would follow me into the parking lot. At jury duty, Great Expectations made a lady think she was my friend; her face crashed when I said, “I don’t understand why all of these people trust police.” We were both disgusted by each other after that. I don’t want to make friends according to my BOOK taste. Maybe I don’t like people with any of my shared interests. Maybe I don’t like myself.

There is one notable BOOK on my shelf that carries a lot of SHAME for me. It is a BOOK from the Brooklyn Public Library. I checked it out just before I moved there, the trip where I got my apartment. I never finished it. I never renewed it. I never brought it back. I never paid my fees. I am the worst patron in the world. When you work in the library, all the BOOKS seem to belong to you. You can erase your fees. You know if someone else wants it and you bring it back. You know if someone else has been looking for it in the system because you can see the search logs.

But it doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the Brooklyn Public Library. It is on my BOOKSHELF, and it has been on my BOOKSHELF for ten years now I think. One day I’ll send it back. One day I’ll clean up all of my mistakes.

Time Warps

Time warps

By order of thickness, in my apartment:

1.     Kitchen near SINK

2.     Bed, closest to window

3.     Desk in office

4.     Chair in front of CHEST OF DRAWERS

5.     Shower stall

Think: you ever seen a commercial for caramel? Ribbons of it, oozing so luxurious, so rich and buttery and golden and perfect, seeming so smooth and nice, see it Now, pouring out of Someone Kindly’s spigot of candy perfection—can you? The ropes fold on themselves, yes? Making clown frowns and towel stacks and then toppling over melting sticky into each other pink elephants on parade style and you can’t separate them and then it’s just one blob of hot runny sweet?

Time: there are places—physical and temporal places both—where it turns and sticks to itself. So you can go into a bend if you’re moving—physically or temporally—in that direction. Then it’s just

and I am chopping vegetables

                                                                                                and I am walking in the snow down Smith Street to meet someone, a friend, he was a friend then, I do not know what he is now, more like a brother and I do not know if that is better, it is five years ago, but I am in my BODY, this keeps happening since the hurricane, back in Brooklyn, I am meeting him to have tapas

.

I am leaving class                       and I am in Bethesda and I am walking with the man who was a friend and there is no middle ground in that friend ship any more  and    we    do     not

.

I am in the shower

and I am in the bedroom and I do not know where I was.

.

“Does that happen to you?”

“I need you to be more specific.”

“Do you fall out of time? In the toilet?”

“I thought it was only me. A symptom. The shower. It’s a portal.”

“How long was I gone?”

“Ten minutes. How long were you gone?”

“I don’t know. I was nowhere. Notime, I was notime.”

“Maybe it just hasn’t happened yet. You’ll remember where you were in the future.”

No: that is the conversation I wished I had had. Why; I don’t know. It’s boring. He has the same experience. I know because he told me. I don’t know why it makes me feel more understood, more at home, more loved, to slant it this way, but it does.

It’s too far away now, too long ago, three apartments ago and I can’t remember what we really said, it feels dishonest to

                                                and I am in the shower            and it is made of elastic. I am in movement inside of time outside the glass all is slowed there is a clock and the minutes do not pass but the water passes just fine and the only sound is the water the drain the me the bottles the shampoo I cannot hear the neighbors I cannot hear the fan I realize after I have finished most of the order of my shower cleaning I must have been in here at least ten minutes I take too long to shower but I have not this time why not because I am in a thin spot the heel of time it is threadbare here there is not enough time to go around it needs to stretch

That’s where I was. In a thin spot. That’s why nothing happened outside.

Faster than light travel is full of tedium and nail trimmings; I’m sorry to be the one to tell you

Bookshelves

Bookshelves (light tan)

The BOOKSHELVES where purchased in Berkeley from an independent furniture shop. I can fit each in my car by themselves. I don’t know if they can go together. The man who worked there asked for my number but I missed my opportunity because I hemmed and hawed. I should have gone back. I saw him again when I bought my CHEST OF DRAWERS and did not want him to have my number then. I do not know why. Shelf-Man, I cannot explain my decisions and no longer feel I have to. But I think of you a lot when I look at my shelves. Know that you live in my mind.  You will never age for me. You will die when I die.

Eyes

Eyes

I started wearing glasses in the first grade.  I don’t remember when I couldn’t get by without them, only that I always had to have them.  There is a fear with glasses, a fear I would be helpless, I wouldn’t be able to get home, the world would be in smoke and tatters and I would be unable to see it all falling down around me.  There is also a lovely muting to taking off one’s glasses, like removing a hearing aid.  People could do whatever they liked, but I couldn’t see them, invisible to me.  A boy in my elementary school very much wanted red glasses.  I thought he was crazy for this.  A fat boy.  A Black boy.  I don’t remember his name, but I want to call him Fred for closure of this memory.  He also wanted a retainer, or maybe it was a headgear, or maybe it was braces.  I guess he wanted to accessorize, or maybe he wanted to be a cyborg.

In the sixth grade, when I was thirteen, my mother let me get contact lenses.  My mother doesn’t call them contact lenses, she calls them her EYES.  I need to go put my EYES in.  My father was not directly involved in these parts of my life, in the physicality of me.  The contacts lenses were terrifying to put in and take out.  Touching an EYE is scary for the physical feeling, squishing the ball of it is a little nauseating, but you also see the FINGER coming right up at it, you have to learn to suppress the desire to close it.  My brother remembers taking my lenses out of my EYES for me.  I don’t remember this, but I don’t doubt it, either.  The novelty of the fear wore off after a little while.  I was free of the glasses fear, but had new fears.  What if the lens got folded up in the corner of my EYE?  What if I lost one?  What if my EYE got infected and rotted out of my head?  What if no one liked my patch?  (In my first college, there was a girl who had Veronica Lake hair, all peanut butter sundae swirls, very carefully and completely covering one of her EYES in a swoop.  We always wondered if and later found out she was indeed missing an EYE.  So there is a better way.)

When I was thirty, due to my own idiocy, I had to spend eleven hundred dollars of health insurance money in two months, so I got my EYES lasered.  I couldn’t get the LASIK on account of my thin corneas.  I had PRK: they blasted the surface of them, as opposed to peeling an orange skin piece up, blasting that, and putting that piece of peel back all nice; what LASIK is.  They messed up the first EYE and for four months I couldn’t tell the difference between a V and a W, an m or and n, or a ‘ and a “.  I was wearing glasses with one lens in them and one poorly lasered EYE, but I could still see the light on the fire alarm at night and my feet when I woke up, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen those things.

They redid my EYE, and did the other one, but I should have gotten the second one done again.  I still need correction in it.  I wear glasses with a very slight prescription in them when I need to read for a long time.  I will never be free of them, I suppose.  (I wouldn’t recommend that doctor.  The male assistant was also a bit handsy.)

The thing no one told me about EYE surgery: you smell your EYES burning.  The entire time the laser is going, it smells in there like burning HAIR.  I mentioned it to the surgeon, and the lady assistant said, Oh, but that’s just the laser!  And we both looked at her hard.  Because lasers are light.  Light doesn’t have smell.  I didn’t want to tell her she’d had dozens of people’s burnt EYES in her nose.  But there was that crumbling, that undertow of knowing, her stomach curled in and her eyebrows went up and she became aware of a bad part of her job.  I ruin things.

When the apocalypse comes, I will see it coming, if somewhat out of focus.  The Beast of the Sea will be easy to spot, but I will have to close one EYE to see him without a bit of a fuzzy halo.  If I want to relax, I’ll have to get my glasses to see the Whore of Babylon riding the dragon with all the HEADS.  But I can run now.  I can run and not need the chemicals and the little rubber sheaths for my EYES.  I am better off now.  I will see my death.

Memory

Thinking of buying Hair? Here is a piece from my Inventory, a piece called "Memory." It's part two to "Dust," the last piece in Hair. The Inventory is an inventory of all the things I own, including my hair, my memories, my skin, my kitchen cart, etc. Everything in capital letters has an entry in the Inventory. Only these two pieces are in this format.

_____

Memory

I saw them again I didn’t know who they were.  The layer of DUST in my MIND was thick. I ran a FINGER through it. 

I knew I’d seen them before.  I didn’t wonder why they were in my house.  I understand what television is still.

They were in the Other Movie We Saw Together, remember?  Do you remember.

I didn’t remember.  There’s so much stuff to rummage through to access who they are, plastic forks and dead friends and extra soy sauce packets and my end of arguments I have to keep up. I was a little EMBARRASSED.  They were trying so hard and the least I could do was remember I saw them the other day.

ACTOR WHO WAS PLAYING THE SACRIFICIAL LAMB WHO WAS ALSO CAPTAIN OF OUR GREAT GENOCIDE PARADE WHO WANTS PIE (IT’S GOT STARS IN IT STARS AND EAGLE FEATHERS AND IT SMELLS LIKE BETSY ROSS’S FRESHLY WASHED HAIR) BUT NOW HE’S ABLE TO MOVE THINGS WITH THE POWER OF HIS MIND BUT ONLY WHEN IT REALLY COUNTS BUT NOT WHEN IT REALLY REALLY COUNTS BUT YEAH WHEN IT REALLY REALLY REALLY COUNTS:

Something.  Something something something.

ACTOR WHO WAS PLAYING THE PSYCHIATRIST AND SUN ADDICT (NOW THAT YOU SAY IT LIKE THAT IT DOESN’T MAKE THAT MUCH SENSE—IT DID IN THE OTHER MYTHOLOGY) WELL IN THIS ONE HE CAN MAKE THINGS CHANGE THEIR SHAPE BUT ONLY SLIGHTLY AND ONLY FOR SO LONG IT’S NEVER REALLY CLEAR WHY HE’S SO NEUTERED AND WHY HE CHOOSES TO HANG OUT IN THE SAME DAMN GIRLY BAR BUT HE ISN’T TIPSY NOT ONCE BUT HE ALWAYS HAS A DRINK AND HE’S NEVER SWEATY WHY AREN’T MOVIE DRUNKS BEADING UP I AM SUDDENLY ANGRY BUT IT PASSES LIKE A PISS SHIVER AND I FORGET ABOUT IT:

Something.  Something over the phone to you.  I am on the phone and saying something.  It is urgent and I am reading it from a card taken from a lovely red envelope with gold lettering.  You wrote it and then forgot it.  It was wiped from your MIND by the Chinky Man With the Long Dirty Opium Addict NAILS Who Speaks Perfect Unaccented English and Who Lives on a Junk Sort of Barge Thingee. He could have been named “Ming the Merciless” and it would have fit. Except no beard, like that makes it okay. Hey, it's a speaking part and at least in this movie not all the colored people die.

ACTOR WHO WAS PLAYING THE SACRIFICIAL LAMB WHO WAS ALSO CAPTAIN JINGOGASM AND NOW HE’S A SAP WHO GETS IT TOGETHER FOR NO REASON:

Something.  I have charming good looks.  Despite everything, this movie is good and everyone in it knows it.

ACTOR WHO WAS PLAYING THE PSYCHIATRIST WHO WENT CRAZY BUT STILL DID HIS JOB AND YEAH HE WAS WORSHIPPING THE SUN WHY DO YOU PICK HOLES IN EVERYTHING YOU YOU’RE THE REASON THIS PERFECTLY FINE MOVIE DIDN’T GET A SEQUEL:

It is your fault you know.  All your fault.  Can’t even be bothered to remember my fucking name, you selfish little shit.

Dear Movie People,

I am terribly sorry I did not recognize you in this movie, although I recently saw you in yet another movie that you were in together, the one with the superpeople heroing around.

Please write your names at the end of this letter—I learn them and they aphasiase themselves away, cotton candy upon the tongue. I know something was there and it was your names, Sirs and Madams, and I am sorry for its absence.  I think your secret names are the ones that I have been told, all choral whispers and the vibrations of strings to the jelly lizard center of my brain and this is the reason I cannot remember.  I will try to do better next time.  I will work on my tiny failings.

Please accept this note of apology.

                        Your pal

                        ________

Your names here:

____________________________

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Do you accept this apology?    [   ]  yes        [   ] no             [   ] other (please explain) ____________________________________________________________________