Oedipussy (8 page)

I turned myself around at the foot of the bed, and she was laying shirtless with the book on her stomach. Her breasts lay perfect on her chest.

"I have a story about last night, you know,” Jenny continued, playfully facetious. “I came here hoping that I could completely go home with the lead singer of this band that I went to see. As his number one groupie and president of his fan club, I just had to bed him. According to this book, if I thought it, I am it."

She threw the book aside in the bed. She beckoned me to crawl on top of her. She continued as I crawled, "and since all human discovery and progress and everything else is a fruitless endeavor, and we are living in this simulation based on our consciousness and messed up concepts of what it means to be alive, that can only mean that there are two things that are certainly off limits to commentary like that. Two things that, regardless of the simulation and how it is portrayed, can completely derail the concept of the simulacrum and make it as ridiculous as it is in the context of these two things."

She began to kiss me. She was talking so very much in her breaths squeezed between the short moments our lips parted.

"Those things are?" I asked. Simulacrum would make a great band name.

"Art, obviously. It portrays and pokes fun of the avatars we are by creating an avatar of the avatar, thereby cutting it out of the fabric of existence to be on its own."

"Isn't mom home?" I asked in response to her hands.

"She left." How had she learned this?

"And?"

She pulled my shirt off, unbuttoned my pants, pulled them down with her feet, and I was hovering over her completely naked.

"This."

A carnal reality to set in motion my recovery and to remind me of my existence. It was beautiful and stunning and real. We were synchronized in the space, the simulacrum taken out of our orbit for only a momentary glimpse of eternity in a moment. It was entirely pure and energetic.

We stepped out of ourselves, by stepping into ourselves. Skin, flesh, the movement of sweat and the deconstruction of the idea of consciousness and words collided with the same energy as our bodies. We were silken and excited, needed each other more than anything in those moments. I felt myself penetrating her to the core of myself, and for hours I desperately tried my hardest to fuse myself with her with every thrust.

In the final moment, in an unusual, synchronous, exhausted climax, her orgasm arrived with a hiss.

"But I am telling you, we're ready. If the only thing we need to worry about is a van, we can get that somehow or shove our equipment into our cars and hope for the best... whatever."

In the basement Steve outlined his plan for the Twin Falls music scene. The plan was to dominate it.

"Have you been feeling ok? You're acting-" I paused. What was this? "I don't know, your enthusiasm is awesome."

"I'm fine, man. Let’s write something."

We rearranged the equipment back into the unity of our regular practice layout. I grabbed a bottle of glass cleaner, and we wiped everything down as we rearranged it, removing pieces of marsh grass, seaweed, and patches of caked mud. I plucked one wispy piece of marsh grass from the fabric of the speaker housing several times like a clown pulling a never-ending stream of hankies from his mouth. 

It didn't seem real that our equipment wasn't a complete wash. Everything sparkled when we were done. It was more beautiful than before.

We plugged in each amplifier, checked each guitar, and examined the rims and wood of the drums for warping and damage. Nothing. It was as if the accident never happened. The tubes behind my amplifier were in perfect condition, even in the face of bounding around the van. Was it possible that I imagined the extent of the damage? Even the accident? I remembered Steve had been ejected from the van.

"Are you okay? What happened with you last night?" I asked as continued to arrange the room.

"I'm fine. Apparently the windshield slowed me down as it broke. We weren't going that fast to begin with, though. I just landed on the pavement and slid a little, I guess. I did hit my head and don't remember it all that much, but I woke up and it was fine. I don't know. Don't worry about it. Everyone is ok."

"Yeah." I didn't understand.

I ran upstairs to grab my notes, and mother intercepted me in the kitchen. I don't know why I didn't expect to see her, and I felt my dream defamiliarization return in the kitchen that wasn't really our kitchen in the house that wasn't really our house, but was. The floor tilted under me, and her face was foggy around the frame of her jawline and indirect parsing of the scene. I had a hard time focusing on her.

"Hi, honey, how was your show last night?"

"You already asked me that..." She waited for an answer. "It went great. There were a lot of people."

"That's wonderful," her face was fuzzy and indistinct, even though all the pieces were there. I couldn't directly see an eye or nose or mouth. She was peripheral. "I know Stevie is here," (Stevie?). "There’s a message on the answering machine for you."

"Thanks."

I walked into the dining room to the little white box with the blinking blue button on it, and pressed the button.

"MESSAGE SENT...TODAY,... AT... NINE-FORTY:" Two distinct voices on this old thing - the robotic voice of the machine, and the voice of the caller.

"Hi, this is Brenda over at Country Mortgag-" Skip button, beep, and the next recording began.

"MESSAGE SENT... TODAY,... AT... NINE-OH-THREE:"

"Hi, my name is Bruce Hirons. This is a completely unsolicited call, but I was at your show last night in Twin Falls and I got this phone number from Paul who gave me a flyer and your press kit. I was impressed with your performance and your EP. Why don't you give me a call back on my cell at..." and he finished with his number and to "call anytime." I quickly scrawled the number and 'Bruce Hirons' onto a piece of scrap paper.

I returned to the basement, and Steve was slapping around his bass, manipulating and bending the notes. He stopped to look up at me.

"Hey - I got a weird message on the phone upstairs about the show last night. Want to call back? Maybe we can do speakerphone?"

"Weird, like what? The accident?"

"No, the show. Maybe it's for the paper or something."

"Oh. Yeah."

We walked upstairs and into the living room where there was a separate phone we never used. It had a speakerphone. The only times that we ever attempted to use it was during holidays and family gatherings where we tried to send our blessings to a bunch of relatives all at once.

The phone was on a small end table, kitty corner to the sofa and love seat. I lifted the receiver, dialed the number, and pressed the speaker button. The ring sang through the small speaker.

"Bruce Hirons." He answered the phone with his name, a striking affirmative. A man was powerful when he answered without a particular 'hello' or 'good morning' or any modern phone etiquette. A response always felt difficult.

"Hi, Mr. Hirons, this is Todd Keefe from The Dawn Ego." I was struggling through this. I should have practiced it before calling. "My secretary (secretary?) left me a note that you called about the show last night. Just giving you a call back."

"Oh, yes, good. The Dawn Ego," he began. In the face of not knowing who this guy was, I thought I might look somewhat desperate and needy. I should have waited a few days to get back to him. At least a few days.

The business of art is nothing more than the art of relationships.

"...I called because I was impressed with the small set you performed last night. You were intimate and electric. I was really surprised. I was in town for my nephew's Bar Mitzvah, and I had nothing to do after the reception, and here I happen upon this little show in a little coffee shop in the middle of nowhere. I always try to check out the local scene wherever I go.

"Anyway, I bought your EP and I am going to take this back to the office in New York when I head back tonight. I would love for you guys to come and meet us and hang around the offices for the day. Maybe we can work something out."

Steve and I looked at each other, and didn't totally understand what he was saying.

"Okay, but... What?"

"Sorry, I work for Arista Records in New York. New acquisitions. Just a coincidence that I was in town and caught your show, but we're always looking for new artists and I really liked what I saw.

"What do you think?" Hirons asked.

Steve and I looked at each other in awe.

"Yes. Yes, absolutely."

"Excellent. Do you have a fax machine? I can send you paperwork that you can fill out about everyone in the band and we can get you guys some plane tickets and a hotel." I gave him the fax number for Kinkos. "Excellent. And this is Todd... Keefe, it says here, right? I'm heading back tonight and I will be in the office on Monday, so I probably won't get my secretary to send it until then if you don't mind waiting.

"Thanks for your time. I look forward to meeting the four of you. Have a great night."

"Thank you," I replied.

A click, followed by a few more clicks. Our stare was broken by the dial tone returning to the line. I hit the hook button, and the call ended. We sat wordless.

I broke the quiet. "I guess we need to tell the guys, right away."

"Perfect. Let's find Kurt and visit John in the hospital."

"We should do that, anyway. We haven't seen them since the accident. This will lighten their spirits considering we have good news!"

"Let's go now!"

We closed the house up, and got into Steve's car.  Both cars, Mother's and Jenny's, were gone. I didn't even remember seeing them leave? Would they had stayed!

We pulled out. The sun shone through everything, as if everything solid was a gossamer transparency of golden summer. The roads were magically smooth, fresh pavement reflecting the afternoon sun through us and the telephone poles and the trees and the sparkling atmosphere bounced back off the seething black tar. The pzzzzzzz of singing locusts cut the air from their invisible hideaways.

We drove to the hospital first. The labyrinthine halls and turns opened up to rooms for patients in long term care. As we approached, gaggles of Vietnamese relatives kowtowed in the hall around his room, crying and turning beads over in their hands. A cloud of incense hung in flat sheets as we entered the room like a scene in Indiana Jones, and I wondered what all the crying and gnashing was about considering he seemed okay when I last saw him being carted off.

As we entered, he lay surrounded with candles and incense. There were candles in jars and some on their own with stalactites of wax dripping across and off the table, and there was something to say about the warm light feeling healthier than the oppressive halogen lights that hung above.

How did they get away with this? Maybe it was a religious thing. But the oxygen? Wasn't that the reason open flames weren't allowed?

John was in bed, surrounded by relatives in robes whispering soft prayers. He was wearing a silken red smoking jaket robe-type thing, matching pants, and leather slippers. Hospitalized Hugh Heffner, here, and his invisible-man-head-bandages remained a ghastly mask. His head was bandaged from the top of his crown, around and around and around, over his face, and conforming to the edges and reflections of his chin, and around and around his neck and down the front of the jacket. Circles of bandages, a Heffnerian cocoon, and no slits to see or breathe.

"Hello gentlemen," he began through the gauze and bandages. His voice was monotone, cool, and robotic.

"Hi." We both unsteadily acknowledged him.

His hand rose, and his head tilted. There was a string tied around it. He was an automaton.

"I am glad to see you both." The sound of his collected voice sounded unhampered by the bandages. It escaped clean and syllabic. "The doctors here have been treating me well and say I will be out of the hospital soon.

"I am lucky that I have great care and the support of my family." His hand swept across the people knelt beside him as he spoke like a king presenting his subjects. The people hadn't even acknowledged our presence. It was as if they were worshipping him as much as praying for him to get well.

"How much longer do you think you have?"

"A day, perhaps."

"What happened?"

"Nothing, but they just want to make sure. They have been worried about my face. They coated it in an anti-burn scar cream and stitched me up. They're just waiting for me to hatch."

That was a joke. Everything about the delivery of his words was off. How the hell was it so easy to hear him?

"Well, we're glad you are doing well," I continued. "We have some great news! We got a call on our answering machine and there was a guy from Arista Records at the show last night. He wants to meet us for a meeting in New York! They're flying us out and taking care of everything."

"That is interesting. I will likely stay here."

"Why? You won't be feeling well, so I get it, but-"

"I thought we were doing this as a hobby."

"We were. But the idea was that if we did well we'd see where it goes, right?"

"I will not be going. I will stay here. I am waiting for my college acceptances. I will get those and focus on going to college."

"Okay," Steve interjected, "but we figured that we'd be taking a year off from college and see where this goes. There isn't one way to do things, you know? We'll be fine."

"You don't understand." John's robotic, collected response was vexing. The gestures, the head tilting, all I could do was put another quarter in and watch him operate. He was imagineered, with a repetitive cycle of movements as a featured performer in The Carousel of Progress. He was jammed between generations, stuck repeating 'it's a bright big beautiful tomorrow,' over and over again in a horrific simulation of humanity. The oven kept exploding, and exploding, and exploding.

"I am waiting to hear back from MIT, Harvard, Oxbridge, and I will be going to whoever accepts me and moving on with my life. This band was a simulacrum of rock stardom. Our accident marked the end of my operation."

Oxbridge? Simulacrum? What was this?

"Well," Steve began, "we wish you luck. I know you'll get into MIT." Steve's words fed him more quarters.

"No, no, Steve, wait. John. John, last night you were fine and you really wanted to be a part of this and we had a great time. What happened?"

"I was hit in the face by a truck moving in the southbound lane of the bridge over Snake River. I died, Todd, and then I was reborn." I wanted to punch the bandaged cocoon head, mechanically bounding back and forth through the same repetitive motions, over, and over, and over again. "I have a second chance. Everything is going to be okay."