The Unwelcome Guest Plus Nin and Nan (2 page)

Anselm was the only one of that bunch I respected, for he actually did his work. His triptychs were masterful examples of abstract narrative photography.
The other clowns? One joined the navy—I think he liked being rear-admiraled. He was the idiot who derided me about ends. Interesting. The other’s a fat loudmouthed piano instructor teaching little kids their Brimhall and Guy Duckworth. I’m sure he steers clear of the Bartok
Mikrokosmos
. Fats Loudmouth put out an album of modern classical music featuring Steerhorn 25 years earlier. It was an excellent and innovative piece of work, but he apparently had nothing else to say beyond that.
The three of them—Fats, Butt Boy, and Anselm, Anselm the least of them—had rolled their eyes at each other over my writing. Their monologues at me invariably began, "You know what your problem is?" or "You know why no one’ll ever read your novels?" or "You wanna know what’s wrong with your writing?"
They were all about talk... If the allegation is true that only two types of artist exist—artists who are busy doing their work and artists who are too busy "being artists," Fats and Butt Boy were the latter. Anselm was the former, but an observer would be hard-pressed to think so if watching Anselm around Fats and Butt Boy. Anselm would adapt, like a chameleon, to his environment, and in a crowd of loud-mouthed blowhards, he could keep his own and do a convincing impersonation of an artist too busy "being an artist."
His advice wasn’t very helpful just then, but despite his pile-on tendencies in the company of thugs who were incapable of construction and who thus only committed destruction, I liked him. One-to-one Anselm could be a profoundly likeable observer of the world around him. Only this particular visit, though, he chose not to be.
So I made an excuse and left. Onwards to California! I barely made it to Chattanooga—the Georgia Mountains test my weariness—but with several emergency-caffeine rest stops, I made it. I just had to be out of Georgia before I could stop. The manhunters there couldn’t follow me across state lines. They could stand there drooling of stupidity until their faces needed shaving—just long enough for me to make my getaway.
No—I lost them. Where to? Up to Illinois to see Anselm.
Anselm answered the door in a smoking jacket and silk slippers. He was gracious, but a bit aloof. He was perhaps as surprised as Fats and Butt Boy undoubtedly must have been that I’d achieved some modicum of success with my work. No doubt they believe I don’t deserve it. I quickly felt uncomfortable and made my excuses.
Back on the road I couldn’t get caught up in human foibles and soap opera relationships. "Hello" was superfluous when not followed by "good bye," and here one had no time for "good bye." The road-weary are a sullen, quiet group. If one encounters someone who is exuberant, that someone invariably turns out to be a local.
The exuberance of the driver is private, reserved as spare energy when all other energy is exhausted. Exuberance burns fast, though, and is normally one of the first energy sources to burn out. Ask any trucker.
energy sources to burn out. Ask any trucker.
wheeler. I had to tank up at this gas station I knew of at the intersection of two alleys in the warehouse district. I’d been drinking, so I wasn’t at my best, and I pulled up short at the pump—the nozzle reached to a foot away from my gas cap. I had to get back in the cab and pull forward some more, which was a little embarrassing. I pushed past a couple of smoking busybodies by the pump. Right as I was about to reach for the cap to open it again, the rig started moving. Oh, shit, I thought. I’d forgotten to apply the brake. The rig rolled ahead and then made a sharp turn, barely missing the building across the alley. It swung around and then barreled into one of the warehouses. I heard an explosion and figured I was in serious trouble. I was facing negligence and DUI, for sure. The owner of the gas station, though, was a friend—a gray-haired fatherly fellow. He called the police and told them someone had stolen the rig from the pump and had smashed it during the getaway. I figured he was being nice to cover for me like that. I excused myself and went to the bathroom, which was an enormous locker room. My pants were soaked with beer from my open can that had spilled on me during the drive. I figured if I didn’t get out of those pants, I’d be arrested. I pulled my shirttails down as far as they’d go and hoped for the best. I shoved my pants into a locker. When the police came, the officer, the owner and I stood together to discuss what had happened. When the officer looked down at her pad, the owner, under the guise of straightening my glasses, slipped a palmed breath mint into my mouth. I figured I must reek of booze. The officer and the owner seemed to be friends, though, so when the owner explained the truck-jacking, the officer told him that it probably had something to do with the disturbance at the parade over the weekend—that this had been orchestrated by the same people who’d orchestrated that disturbance. What disturbance or what parade I had no idea, but the two of them sure did. The owner nodded in agreement. After the officer had taken our statements, I walked to the elevated train. The officer followed me. She sat opposite me and started talking about how she had to ride the train to and from the police station because her car had been wrecked during the parade riots.
I got off the train at Central, the next-to-last stop. The officer must have been continuing on to Linden, the end station. I went into the station bathroom—also a locker room—and on a hunch opened a locker and found a pair of pants that fit. The station contained a coffee shop, which was run by a young 20-something couple who were very much in love. I had some coffee and shot the breeze with them, teasing them a little for their young love.
I left the coffee shop and stood outside by the bus stop. No bus was in sight. I realized I’d left my cigarettes and my Arno Schmidt book that I always carried with me in the coffee shop. I went back in and for the first time noticed a display of t-shirts for sale inside the station. The shirts were a motley collection of sports teams, rock bands, and glib sayings. I went back into the coffee shop, commented sarcastically on the t-shirts, and picked up my cigarettes and book. The coffee shop guy tried to crack a joke about Schmidt, but it wasn’t funny. I left.
Outside I saw an old man had come to wait for the bus as well. Then I realized that in my offense I’d forgotten my book and cigarettes again. I went back to the coffee shop again and picked up the Schmidt book but couldn’t see the cigarettes. I’d assumed the coffee shop guy had taken them, but before I accused him, I checked my pockets and found I had them in my shirt breast pocket.
Outside again, the old man and I talked about weather and the disintegration of the moral fiber of our nation. The bus came. Once seated aboard, I fell asleep.
The old man shook me awake. He told me we’d come to the next-to-last stop and that he had to get off. He told me he lived in a building down an alley a few blocks away. I was unfamiliar with it, but he said the people who lived there always complained. The owner was a slumlord, he said. He left. The next stop was mine, so there I got off.
Now I remember what the police officer had told me: they suspected that the man behind the parade bombings was one Edwin L. Thoth. Small world.
I, years earlier, had written a small volume on Thoth. I had written it in a pre-bound blank book and had intended to photocopy it for someone. I tried to tear the pages out of the book, but accidentally tore an enormous chunk out of the center of that group of pages. The chunk fell, flaked apart, and flew away into the river, so much of the text of the piece disappeared. I was unable to reconstruct what the text had once been.
I remember the previous year’s downtown parade. Christmas shopping season afflicted the city. I was working part-time in the largest multi-story bookstore in the city. We were fending for and fending off dozens of customers simultaneously, all of whom were demanding and laborintensive. When my hour lunch break arrived, I went outside to meet a buddy, a co-worker whom I was going to have lunch with—or "drunch," as we called it. I couldn’t find him in the crowd outside, so I walked down to the south Loop bar by myself. Or I was going to. I was stopped by a parade a block away between me and my destination. I could see the enormous balloons and papier-mâché constructs going by—skyscrapers the size of skyscrapers and busses the size of office buildings were moving along the street. I realized I’d never get to the bar and back with time left over for sufficient drinking, so I instead went to one of the more expensive bars on State Street. Fortunately, happy hour had hit, and the drinks came with all-youcan-eat hot wings. I don’t remember ever going back to the store.
Maybe Edwin was there, selling balloons. He’d done that for a while, working for the over-inflated balloon lady. I have a photo of him somewhere, caught with dentures between flaps—he’d flap them around in his mouth— Snap! Dangle! Snap!—because he was too cheap to buy adhesive. He sold balloons until he slept with the balloon lady and her husband found out. You could say her husband popped that balloon. Her name was Armenia and her husband was a turkey. Neither of them gave Edwin a second thought. Until they disappeared underground. Literally. That was when I discovered that Edwin was a master of disguise and was also known by the name "Lubjec," which might be what the "L" stood for. "Lawrence" might have been a fabrication.

At 3:10, I intended to leave for a trip to the city. A church there had a position for an organist, and, well, the bank I was in wasn’t making it. I’d had to play part-time at a mock-Christian bar, and I’d fake it so well some folks thought I could pass for the real thing. So they asked me to guest-play as one of three finalists for the job.

I was waiting for the bus with a box of jelly doughnuts on my lap when I remembered my dry cleaning. I ran to get it. I couldn’t afford to miss the bus because the President would be speaking at noon.

I’d forgotten about the doughnuts, which smashed all over me in vibrant colors.
The dry cleaners had lost the top front button to my suit, a detail I did not notice until the most embarrassing possible moment later. But I did make the bus. For a few blocks.
Then the bus broke down. And I hadn’t had time even to change my clothes.
"What’s the big idea?" you may be thinking.
Precisely! No big idea. Build gradually. See how the building wants to be built.
I walked back to the bus stop. That had been the last bus for the day, she said. Then she laughed at my clothes.
"It’s not funny," I said.
"It sure is!" she laughed.
"Ha ha," I said, and then I started laughing too. Then I stopped. "The bad thing is I’m going to have to miss the President’s speech."
"Nah. You can watch it on C-Span. Come on—my shift is over anyway." Out of the shadows stepped her replacement—a fifty-year-old Chinese man.
As we left, she asked me what I did for a living. I couldn’t answer "church organist," so I told her the name of the band I’d been in.
"Hey," she said. "Do you mind my asking if you have a girlfriend?"
At that moment I knew she liked me.
We went to a bar, and she sang Matchbox Twenty while we shot some 9-ball. I knew then that I liked her, too.
We started dating. Oh, the best dating I’ve ever known. She was fun, intelligent, beautiful...all I could ask for in someone. She was fantastic!
And then she went away.
But she came back! So I won’t dwell on going away. The coming back is so much more important.
It glows. Warming us, illuminating us. Our burdens have become light. We lift off and hang-glide alongside each other. We dip, falling into the water and rising back out into the sky again. We can fly through the mouths of volcanoes into the heart of magma, through the core and out the other side of the earth. We fly the spool between north and south poles.
We are bathed in aqua vitae.
She says we don’t live in a democracy—we live in a representative republic.
She’s right.
But most activists are hedge trimmers. Most real writers are root-killers.
Ah, off to Hasty Generalization land again, I see. You always go there.

"As do you."
"Nurse, he’s talking to himself again."
"Okay—here. Give him this lozenge."
I try to unwrap it, but it’s melted to the wrapper. I

can’t pull the lint off it. The lint’s not even mine. I remember—it was the third Sunday before lint..."
"No! Don’t do that! For once?"
"And the band played on..."
"Not at the price of clichés, it doesn’t. Groundrules: no clichés, no fuzzy animals, no soap operas..."
"No whoppers, no tall tales..."
"No redundancy or repeating oneself."
"Nice sarcasm!"
"No invective, asshole!"
"No bombast, you pusillanimous fool!"
"Less negativity. Bummer."
"What? It can’t be a tragedy? Then how will it ever be taken seriously?"
"Ah..."
And we agree. So we’re asking you—an’ you take the wheel for a while. I’m too out of it to keep driving. Thanks. It’s been a long day.
How’s your day been? Hopefully okay.
If not, well, hey—I understand.
I’m actually doing well right now. I have an amazing fiancée. My writing and publishing are blossoming. My teaching is dying. There’s the tragedy.
"I mean bigger."
Okay okay. It’s a big deal to me. Sorry. So let me tell you this story.
Sure.
A fish was swimming in the sunstreams. He’d surface in the epicenter of splashes. He sewed the ocean shut.
The birds cried out, "Oh, tailors of fish, come to us so we might save our friends the fish from suffocation."
The tailors honored the request and opened the ocean. The birds began to dive and catch the fish. Coleridge betrayed the albatross.
If fifteen men ate eggs for breakfast, not one would have praised the albatross. Thanks to Coleridge. What was he? High?
Oh, yeah. I guess he was. Now
I
would never do anything like that, mind you.
Quiet, you back there. I’m trying to sink.
Better let it out, then.
We need more colors down here. We’re tired of it always being blue.
That’s the request?
Sure.
Cool. Thanks.
People need this stuff flung at them in big chunks. Just to awaken them.
Uh...
"Sorry. Just thinking out loud."
Happens to us all.
Not all. There you go again.
Sorry. I’ll try to notice from now on. Old habits, eh? Are like old houses? Yeah, I’ve heard that. No clichés! Sorry, boss.
Cut it out.
Hey, what’d be cool is if we went somewhere. Together.
Yeah, all of us [gesturing towards us].
Where’d you have in mind?
My upcoming marriage.
Congratulations, man.
Thanks. I’m lucky.
Beware of clichés!
Okay. She is ubiquitous in my future. Her presence will bless every day.
Time for a change?
Mr. President, anything except blue, please. We’re way tired of yellow. Black and white invite race comparisons. Red is dead.
Green is ambiguous enough, perhaps.
So what do you say, Mr. President?
I once wrote a letter to the Mayor of Macon and another to the Superintendent of the Bibb County School Board. A friend of mine wrote the latter a letter as well. We never received replies. My conclusion is that these individuals must be illiterate. I see no evidence of any literary life. Those with no literary life are illiterate.
Of course, the President on TV did not respond to my question. My love didn’t know why I kept talking to the TV. This was the question I’d saved up for him. Logic, compassion, entreaty, fair-mindedness had been proven beyond his abilities. I thought color might work. One of the President’s friends (a televangelist, incredibly) never grew past purple. People get hung up on colors. Funny, eh?
A pure obelisk beckoned mauve magpies to drop aquamarine presents onto it. I walk past it every day on the way to work. What do I do? I edit a magazine;
Your Expansive Future
. Don’t ask. It’s a living. I’ll tell you about it later.
My advice: when people tell you how to write, smile and nod and then let your eyes glaze over, yawn, and turn to talk to someone interesting.
She calls me from the kitchen: "Can I get you anything?"
"A beer would be nice," I reply.
"All I have is Pajama Brew."
"It’ll do. Thanks." Fermented pajama squeezin’s. Oh well. If it’s cold enough. "Is it cold?"
"Ice cold."
"Perfect. Thanks."
"Want it on ice?"
"No, no. You don’t do that with beer."
"Really? I do."
"Well, you’re an oddball. That’s probably why I love you."
"Really? I love you too, for many reasons. Metaphysical and emotional."
"And physical?"
"Of course. You know that."
"I suppose I do."
I’m at her house right now. It’s 2:30, and I have to be in at 9:00. I can’t sleep, though. We were in the middle of making love when her nine-year-old son walked in. He was sleepy, but it freaked her out. We didn’t get back to making love, so I’m sitting here writing. I love her.
Turn off the soap opera. I hear you. But you know, life does actually contain soap opera moments and corny moments and why not include them? To not do so is to oversimplify life.
But still, you’d probably like a story to pin this on. Onward, Charles! Remember—to be fashionable means you can be fashioned into things. We pathetic humans never seem to forget having been fashioned. Now we are as mere ceramic playthings. Make sure you get good and glazed before you get fired.
I leave her place and walk home. The obelisk is lit. In the night haze, it takes on a bluish aura. The aura moves, like oscilloscope lines, in the rhythms of my
muscae volitantes
.
The fog-dampened boardwalk on the edge of the sea is nearly empty—a few persistent anglers still cast from the pier; a small family walks barefoot by the water’s edge; a dead brown pelican lies in a heap at the end of the pier, next to the garbage can. The garbage can is filled with dead pelicans.
The cemetery nearby is filled with dead anglers. Death has been busy this year. He deserves a year off. At least. Several boards on the walk need replacing. The risks of falling through and being seriously injured are great. Even so–I was taught to skip by an old sea captain Irish mountain goat.
At the end of the boardwalk is the entrance to a path into the woods that stretch for dozens of miles in any direction except binary. The true stars are they who deny the opposition total supremacy. Or so De Saussure might have said. Who’s to know? Gigi or G.G. Allen? Is it all a matter of taste? Or is that a false dichotomy?
Quick—the door! Out here! Quick!
I follow him. He slams the door.
"Oh, man. I couldn’t take one more second of that." he says.
"Me, either," I confess. He leads me into a hidden tavern underneath the boardwalk.
"If you’re headin’ into those woods, you’re gonna need some bolstering," says he.
Instead, I go into the city. I find a bar made of soap. Convenient should I pass out on my stool, slide my face across the bar and wake up ready for a shave. I could use a laser, the newest way to shave out of the East.
Yeah, smart ass, why don’t you Kanji then.
Sorry—I didn’t mean anything.
That’s just it. You never mean anything.
Oh, well
that’s
nice.
Hush! Do you see that?
The entrance to the woods. Do I have to?
He nods.
I’m in. The trees are weak here on the outskirts. Lots of bare limbs.
Hey, get your mind out of the gutter! He yells. I’m referring to the trees, I yell back.
I see Jim Chapman coming back the other way. "How’re the woods?" I ask.
"Freaky. I just wrote about them."
"Oh." Better find some new ground.
This time make sure it hasn’t already been taken.
Gerdes and Chapman, in a land grab for material, race neck and neck.
Actually, it’s not like that. Material shared is material urned. So, of course, I razed the forest and retreated into the city where nothing is natural.
Nothing in my life is natural.
I am an artificial man, at least on a cellular level. Reentering the city, I see the design patterns made by the lit lights of the high-rise buildings lining streets like chess pieces. In this game, though, all are pawns.
Wake up! Your country brethren aren’t going to help! The Kraken has swallowed all your lovers’ lovin’, so there ain’t none left for you.
Nor will there ever be. Love died with the computer commuter for whom sex is just another plug-in. You hear me? You! Over there on the seat riding sideways! How many cities can one heart hold? Mine holds Atlanta, Kiel, Geneva, Mulungwishi, Cape Town, Nashville, Chicago, Iowa City, Dubuque, Anchorage, and Macon, all for having lived there. Add to that list of cities I’ve slept in and you’ll see there is in my heart precious little space. Any one city is big enough to fill the space.
Unable to leave the city, I decide to find my way downtown. I buy a Bosc pear at a kiosk and a newspaper out of a machine. I find a seat on a bench in the park. The Staples Singers are playing a gospel festival.
What? In the city?
Certainly. It’s Gospelfest or something.
Is Mahalia there?
No, man, she passed a while ago.
As I weave my way towards the stage, I see my shoelace has come undone. I bend down to tie it and some bozo galumphs into me from behind. I go rolling like a bowling ball into a group of furniture sales representatives out for a Sunday stroll.
"No," says one, "I always argue that the loveseat is an essential part of any living room. That way you have seats to accommodate groups of one, two
or
three."
"Is one a group?"
"Well...you know—I
do
have schizoid friends." "Ah..."
"And people who are satisfied by themselves."
"Oh!"
"And a mosquito bite on the back of my knee that’s driving me insane. Please excuse me." He takes off and goes into the can.
Another takes his place. "He’s a crackpot," says she. "Any couple in a loveseat would rather be in the bedroom," says she. "That much is obvious."
The city talks thus. The country is subtler.
Driving home, I hear the debate. I try to make it home, but I fall asleep and crash on the way—
"I can’t wait."
The grid engulfs me. My fingers and toes become enmeshed in it. Then the ground gives way. The city spires jut up at me, spearing me in the side. The churches have no idea what they’ve done, spearing the heavens.
The city is a confidence artist. No, not artist. The city hates the artist. The city is an assembly-line worker. What’s being manufactured are the citizens. I believe I am my social security number, my driver’s license number, my phone number.
This is no mere village.
Some things add just a fine eloquence.
Something’s adjusting vanilla quince.
Don’t you?
My nails are pulled from my fingers and toes. They are replaced by hatred, with hate, from the hateful.
And the north seems to beckon. Leave the city: go to the inhospitable zone, it suggests. But I see through that trick. If I crawl off to die in the woods, the city won’t have to deal with me. Well, me they’re going to find skewered on their main spire. Unless I succeed in shutting it down, which I don’t want to do. A shut down city is the scariest thing in the world.
I’ve seen fifteen cities shut down in the last thirty years—rioting, looting, excessive force, casualties—these are the results.
Waving back and forth in the breeze, the rhythm is ambient reggae. I’d say it was romantic, but I’ve been told I have no idea what romance is, so it must be something different. Ask my wives—they know how romantic I am. Ask the second especially. The first didn’t really like me much. Oh, that’s not true. She just tired of me quickly. It’s not easy living with me. For one thing, I do not like filling out forms.
Remember: you only have the right to assembly if you fill out the proper forms. You only have the right to free speech if you fill out the proper forms.
I remember one man, Lubjec, I think his name was, who couldn’t fill out forms either. He was a neighbor of mine in an apartment building in Old Town. He told me he so agonized over filling out forms, he’d gotten sick, so his job fired him. After that he just stayed home and filled out every form he could find. I do not want to become him.
Of course, he didn’t have a car like mine: a charcoal 2000 Toyota Camry. What a car—the best sled I ever had —or does "sled" only refer to motorcycles? I forget.
Nor did he have my wife. Well, she’s not really my wife, legally, but in every other sense she is. Know what I mean? And—I don’t mind bragging—she is amazing.
The President on TV asks, "Are you willing to make sacrifices for your country?" I imagine huge Viking pyres consuming domestic artists, but I guess he meant on a personal level, and, no—I will not sacrifice my wife for anything or anyone. I then notice the President is wearing a dark green suit. Excellent. The last one wouldn’t wear green. The Mayor had condemned him for it, which was awkward during the convention because the Mayor, of course, was a delegate in his home city, which hosted the convention. Lubjec of all people, ended up kidnapping the Mayor. Of course, the police, once they found him, shot him in self-defense while he slept. The Mayor, having been rescued, had ordered the shooting. And then all of Lubjec’s neighbors had to be questioned, of course. Wonderful. The Mayor’s secret police didn’t take long to find where I was, and I only barely escaped—my downstairs neighbor tipped me off when they came to her door. She called me and left the phone off the hook so I could hear everything. I was gone before the second sentence. No way was I going back to jail.
I moved to another city where, as I said, I became a church organist in a rock band.
No wonder a small place like Grand Rapids had had some appeal to me, though I knew I couldn’t be there long in the land of the thumped. I’d like to say we got there without a hitch, but my wife got very sick—I think from the morphine inhalant tubes we’d been drinking. I had to get her off the bus long before we made it to the city. I can’t remember where exactly it was—we were pretty high— but it was a big city. I remember seeing a bar open from seven am to seven pm.
I remember jeeps rolling though the streets. It was a city under martial law, I think. How we escaped the city I don’t recall. My wife might know. But probably not. We woke up two days later back in our city and we weren’t sure if we’d actually gone on a trip until I found the gas receipts. I’m not sure who signed for half of them—the handwriting’s neither mine nor hers, but it resembles Lubjec’s, strangely. But that couldn’t be. He was dead. Or so the police had told us. Who knows if they are telling the truth, though. Frequently they don’t.
The President has formed a commission to look into reported abuses by big city cops. I’m sure the commission will never be heard of again–it was a salve announcement.
It’s a Salve New World, Little People. Do as you’re told and you won’t get hurt. I think that’s the gist of his message.
Of course, we freaked out when we came to. I mean, there we were, hunted for questioning, and we returned to our lair. We got out of there fast, amazed that the police hadn’t staked our place out, or had they? Had our return been at their hands? Were we being watched? We weren’t sure. How could we be? When I caught her looking at me suspiciously, I knew we had to move again. That would keep her distracted. We moved six times in four months, until she trusted me again. By then, we’d picked up six species of cockroach in our boxes. We finally decided to fumigate. We set off our bombs and went to a motel. When we got back the next day, our apartment had been ransacked. They had found us again.