War Is Language : 101 Short Works (9781937316044) (8 page)

33 — boy,

No reason, no rhyme. No way, navy boy. Better off naked with
the aftersun blind squint. On leave Momma used to say, “I’m glad
you were born girls so your father doesn’t beatchu.” So why did she
dress me as a boy? Momma’s momma always tattooed, “Wanted one, had
one for a minute, ‘fore he died,” on the days on blue afternoons
removed from 1940-what? Those holes in a wrong-made heart, that
two-day blue baby, that boy. I ain’t apologizing. Momma never did.
Did she? Didn’t have to. My daddy let me on his lap anyway—a
Let’s read the Sunday funnies
girl, despite Daddy’s too-bad-about-it. Was that the grief at
the dinner table? Too bad about the reasons. Too bad about the
blues. Too bad about the boys born boys and beaten for it. Too bad
about the girls born girls to mothers bereft of sons. Droves of
women pulsing with resentment have nowhere to put shorn anchors
pulled through an unforgiving decade of ribbed necks and navy
blues. White caps, historic, heave into the crashing scream-sky.
Boy. What boy? Baby blue grows up, grows wild, and collapses.
Forget all that. Stay little. What can you carry on your cotton
chest? Battleships, bugs, puffy school buses flaking apart, and
paleontology, boy? Little girls play dress-up too: inadequate
biceps flexing pretend proud in the deadweight lift of
eyes.

65 — Ego Confronting
Mortality

Dear Fake Advice
Columnist,

My wife just had a kid. In terms of
personal stability, I’ve recently taken a nosedive off the deep
end. Thoughts?

Dear Ego Confronting
Mortality,

I'm all for security, for turtle toys
that cast weak-lit stars on the ceiling, and I definitely support
your
completely-and-totally-unprecedented-I-mean-seriously-never-before-experienced
transition into fatherhood. You’ll need a few traditions. Watch the
role-playing. He doesn't deserve the backlash of resentment that's
sure to follow if you abandon yourself. (And you don't deserve his
reactionary rebellion that's sure to follow that.) Teach him about
Shamrock Shake season. That’ll shut him up.

34 — Lunch
Alone

My Server’s been a waiter at a little red-trimmed
French restaurant as long as I've been going there. Today, he
talked for an hour after I took his suggestion to order a glass of
pinot blanc.

The squash soup and the salade
anchoiade were on the table. With total control over my domain I
placed the butter so that it would melt a bit in the sun. Three
times My Server came to the table, offering his services. I said I
was fine, repeatedly. However, he was not about to be put off. He
finally came over to the table a fourth time and said, "I'm here,
you know."

There are men with money and power.
Others with great ideas, unfulfilled.

It seemed he needed to be needed. So,
I put my pen and papers down, leaned back in the chair, and waited.
Quickly, the story unfolded. He told me about his travels in
Europe, his being a paramedic for a while, but how he didn't like
letting people die when they had no proof of health insurance, how
he considered getting on with the fire department, but that he
didn't want to dumb himself down that much to fit in with the guys,
how he'd been in real estate for a while, how he'd been in the
restaurant business longer, how he liked to drink three glasses of
white wine and wash it down with a beer, but that not enough places
have a good wine list and a good beer list, and how he hated anyone
thinking he was a pussy for wanting white wine; he explained that
there was a great neapolitan pizza place—coal fire and truffle oil—
near Wellington & Ravenswood and a great new brewing company,
Revolution Brewing Company, in the vicinity of Milwaukee &
Fullerton, and also how he's getting married in June.

He had to excuse himself to answer the
phone. I heard more as he spoke to someone else. He's Russian, a
Russian Jew, with a Catholic grandmother, who took lots of
antidepressants. The old woman at the bar was shocked that a Jew
had ever married a Gentile. She tried to contain herself, but
commended his family on their success, their triumph over social
stigma. He said that his fiancée is not Jewish. This shocked the
woman even more. "Don't you know the lineage goes through the
mother?" Meaning, he should marry a nice Jewish girl. He said, "We
just want to be happy."

My Server and the other server laughed
at the man on the phone whose order was taken. Whoever it was
became a detestable gargoyle in my mind: an individual incapable of
trusting them to get his dinner right. I heard, “I’ll give you two
French onion soups and a Nicoise salad. I know. No bread. Don't
want you calling me back about sending you bread." He waited. Then
said, "So, bread with the Nicoise salad?.” Later, “I’ll be looking
forward to it."

The primary concern of the day was My
Server’s vision for the Cedar Hotel. He came back over and stood
there daydreaming near the blue flowerpot with the red-and-yellow
orchids pouting their polka dot lips, wearing his long white apron,
white shirt, yellow-square-patterned red tie, and leaned forward on
a leg up on the windowsill.

“Boutique hotel,” he said, “like the
Hotel Allegro downtown." We both stared at the eyesore across the
street. I didn’t know what to look for to see what potential he
saw. But I waited, silent, and he showed me its value. Location is
everything. The building was so close to Carmine's, to all the
happenings on Rush. He had me. It was a great idea. I got excited,
thought about spillover clientele, suggested a blues singer. He
said, "No. Not that. No."

Sure. He knew the developer, a bit.
Didn't think much of his choices to slap a neon sign on the front,
stucco the ground floor, and open it up as a shit hole. My Server
knew exactly what it would take. He knew what should be on the
menu, how to get neighborhood signatures for a liquor license, how
to decorate each of the rooms individually with great designers,
how to get it up and running and make a great first
impression.

I said, "How well do you know the
owner?"

He said, "Not well enough to talk to
him."

I said, "It sounds like you've got
most of it figured out. You never know, he might be receptive. Get
him on the right day. Get him in the right mood. He'll
listen."

He didn’t refute me,
exactly.

We talked about structural integrity,
gut rehab, what the rooms might look like on the inside, since it
used to be a hotel for transients and the rooms have been shut up
tight for at least five years. We talked about hotel developers,
Miami's renovations, drug money in suitcases, and where to
start.

36 — Get Rich & Save
the U.S. Economy in the Process!

Sorting
motivational accessories on Monday: bootstraps, grindstone,
attitude, Calvin Coolidge's persistence for year two, Midwestern
work ethic, humility, Che Guevara propaganda beret—size small, a
whole pile of self hyphenates (e.g., self-reliance, self-control,
self-determination, self-respect, self-sacrifice, etc.), then you
get into the various abstract cultural ideals (freedom, liberty,
'Merican Dream, unity, solidarity). There's some leftover stuff,
too. Like common purpose and shared vision. Not sure where those
go.

You'll say, "I'm
capitalizing!"

They'll be like, "Why?"

You're like, "I don't know. Isn't that
what we're supposed to do? I want to own my own business, be my own
boss, innovate, understand the new economy, and be part of what’s
happening now.”

“Why?” “You can’t.” “You’ll be one of
them.” “That’s stupid.” “It’s too risky.” “Aren’t you a Democrat?”
"No way. That would never work out." “Do you even understand the
tax implications?”

Pish-posh. It's fine that it seems
nebulous. Give it credence. Give it time. What’s to prevent us from
having cockfighting rings in the basement on Tuesday
nights?

But if you can stop the hurt from
affecting anyone, from destroying anything, you win. Ten points.
Keep your comments to yourself and just don’t tip her so
much.

"Yes! Let's do it."

70 —
Virgin/Whore

Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

I got raped when I was in college.
Most of my friends did too. I don’t know why. It shouldn’t be that
big of a deal. I don’t even really remember it. Disembodied trauma
and shit. But I was wondering if I could have a normal sex life
again. Nothing elaborate, just a sweet loving connection with the
man I love.

Dear
Virgin/Whore,

No. What are you talking
about? You shouldn’t even think about having any kind of sweet
loving connection. Who the hell do you think you are? Plus. That’s
all a bunch of brainwashing, propagandistic bullshit. You’re
liberated! Don’t let yourself get hamstrung by Laura Ingalls
Wilder. It’s all crap, another created market branded to sell you
off into a cult of prim piety. So. No. This is what you tell that
sentimental sap of a boyfriend of yours:
Why would I consult you? I got lessons from a real live
dominatrix who showed me a contraption for home use on her sales
floor. What? Nothing you say now matters anyway. I already spent
the money. Just shut up and listen while I parrot her sales pitch
about how this key-to-vinyl-heaven comes in a variety of custom
colors. You like red. You should be happy. You wanted a surprise
for your birthday. Just get over here, hand me the Allen wrench,
and deal with it. This thing converts into seven pieces of
furniture. I don’t remember what all the contortions are called.
Only "fuck bench" lingers in my mind.

12 — Ma Deuce

That summer night, before I joined the army, I
thought swimming would mean we’d hop a fence in some Canadian
neighborhood. But no. We drove out onto a back road and then
further down a rutted grass path covered with trees until the guy’s
car gave up and stopped.

I was drunk enough. As soon as I got
out of that car I heard the roar, saw low orange clouds. Two guys,
boys really, took us down a path to some sort of trestle or crane
that reached out over the Niagara River. Now I don’t know the exact
distance we were upstream from the falls. But I know the river was
already anxious about going over that edge. Swift currents rushed
over rocks. Eddying shifting waters surged in smooth swells nearby.
Right under the trestle the water was just one smooth silk curl and
deep enough. If I had to guess conservatively, I’d say we were less
than a mile upstream from the falls. I shudder to think how close
we really were.

Civilization now has nothing to do
with simpering sets of crossed ankles and ungloved fingers reaching
for tea cakes. A woman has only to do with regulations. It’s a life
of don’ts. One can only stand so long at a kitchen sink, pouring
simple glasses of homemade lemonade. Such god damned relegation. A
woman is not to enjoy standing under some inundating Niagara, or to
love the concussion of the falls, to feel the doom-damning imminent
thrill of maybe, just maybe, accidentally going over the
falls.

No one should, I guess. It’s not about
equal rights anymore. It’s really more a safety concern. Still I
think, “But what of Liberty?”

A more secure woman wouldn’t have
joined the army, but I did and stood in a tiny little shed above
the night-fire course in the Ozarks. I was with a drill sergeant
who manned a machine gun. He shot live rounds out over the soldiers
from my platoon, friends, who were low-crawling under barbed wire
getting tear gas powder in their mouths. I backed into the corner
of the shed and watched the shell casings pile up on the floor. He
said to me, “Jones. You’re one of those serious privates, aren’t
you?”

I had a huge crush on this guy. He was
hot, skinny, rugged, and drove a cherry red classic convertible
Mustang from the ’60s. But when he said to me, “Jones. You’re one
of those serious privates, aren’t you?” while magnesium flares
burst over the live-fire training field where two hundred of my
friends were, that crush ended.

I agreed, I suppose. Who
knows?

Not then but later, I thought back to
the night I jumped into the Niagara River so close to those falls.
Before deciding to go for a swim with the guys we met, this friend
and I went out after her mom had gone back to the hotel. We met the
guys at the bar. They followed us onto the street. Then we all four
wandered. You know, somewhere together with nowhere in mind. I
don’t remember climbing onto the roof of a grocery store. But we
did and tossed rocks near the feet of unsuspecting pedestrians.
You’d toss a stone and then watch a woman look all around for the
culprit. Invariably, she’d never look up. Women don’t. We did not
throw rocks at men.

Anyway, after we grew tired of this
grocery store roof game, one of the guys must have said, “You girls
want to go swimming?”

So what if I was a serious private a
few months later?

Who knows who jumped from the trestle
first, but when it was my turn I fell somewhere between ten and
thirty feet to the water. That stupendous current accepted my body
like nothing ever had. I swam like crazy for the bank. I think my
friend may have jumped more than once, but I’m pretty sure that
once was enough for me. I knew I’d reached some kind of limit of my
daring. I don’t think I was the only one. After a couple of jumps
each we found what privacy was available as couples and made out on
the high cement pylons.