Polite Fictions

Razor

I know that at twenty-one feet, or less -- when an edged weapon is in play -- a firearm becomes as useless as tits on a hog. I know this because the first one was free. Actually, that aint quite true. The first one cost me a nickle.

In an ass-crack corner of the back table section, you can tell the scrubs form the salty dogs.The scrubs are the ones with missing digits and deep scars. And they're nervous as a catholic whore in a protestant church. The dogs, the wild ones that on occasion howl at the full blood-moon, are identified by the barren, hairless patches on their arms. This is how the ones that know know. This is how the ones that are paid for it test their metal.

Razor sharp. Clean and close and just a little dab will motherfucking do ya. You damn sure don't want a dab of what those cowboys are slingin'. Trust me.

It always starts with the First. The first knife that you ever receive. His was a Barlow. What they call a "nickle knife". Smooth, wood-grain body. Two blades. From the factory -- shiny sides so that you can almost see the malicious intent. Who could know? One blade, from the tang to the point, is 3.0 inches. The other, a specific, ultra-precise, almost a surgeon's scalpel. Almost. Still some rough edges, but, close enough for this kind of work. Close enough to here the Wind. They hardly ever stay that shiny for long. New knives.

It was his father that give him the first one. He was 12. His retirement gift from the Quarry. 30 years, plus two lungs full of dust and a prognosis of 2-3 years left. Without treatment. Nobody never could afford treatment. Not even from the Company doctors. Who weren't really doctors and everyone that knew anything knew that. He heard that song often -- the one that They sing down to the Wet Saw. Where everyone went after their respective 10 hour day. Six days a week. A tar paper shack held together by popcorn fart dreams and dust from their clothes that held in the air tiny, weak helium balloons from the company fair.

Two to three years/so let's drink up the beers/cause the Man in the Office is passin out slips/And if we'd gone farther/we'd have hit Water/and aint no one get dust in his lungs on a ship.

So his daddy had give him that Barlow and then asked for a coin in return. "How much, daddy," he asked. "Not much, boy. Any coin'll do. Ya see, boy - if'n you don't give a coin, you'ns sever the friendship. Metal and blood cost money. Always has, always will. Ain't nuthin for free, boy. You understand?"  A long pause. A peaked eyebrow and a scratch of the ragamuffin hair as he stared into his fathers dusty, rough hewn eyes. "I understand, daddy." And you hand over an indian head nickle.

Then, fat Stewart Dailey, the Unionbuster's son, makes fun of your poverty. He says that your daddy's gonna die by Christmas because you're poor. He says that if your daddy had cut out the East Ridge, instead of makin a big stink about it to the EPA, talkin bout erosion and land management and gee-ology (he drew out the "g" long and slow. always) and involvin all them Geeee-ologists and other smart folk. The last straw was when fat Stewart Dailey called his daddy, a scab. Then he said, all them office boys'd take real good care of his mama. He smiled that shit eatin' smile that all them inside fellas had on their faces while they wiped sweat of'n their brow with crisp hankerchiefs.

Then......then, he opened fat Stewart Dailey' from crotch to throat with his Barlow. The warm, khaki path under fat Stewart Dailey's feet turned to moist, unkilned terra-cotta and flooded his shoes. The world went milk white and spun on its needle axis. And then, fat Stewart Dailey was very quiet indeed. 'Bout goddamn time, he thought to himself.

The first one was free. All the ones to follow have a price tag.

It was two days before -- and eight years longer than "two to three" -- Christmas when he called home. His mama answered the phone and there was a strange tremolo in her voice. He thought of 'ol Sam Murphy who used to play the saw on his front porch when the fireflies would come out. That's what his mama's voice sounded like. "Your daddy's dead, son." He felt his front teeth come together through his lip. And then the warm salt. "When?" was all he could say. "Last night. Round 'bout supper time I found him there on the porch. He'd been a whittlin. Think it was a dog, or cat or somthin. He looked kind of whitewashed in his cheeks and he said somethin before he died....." She started to weep. "Yes, mama?" 'Ol Sam's saw, higher pitched and sharp as the edges on cut, polished granite. "He said that you was wrong. He said that no matter what you think now, that first one wasn't free. It cost you mor'n that indian nickle. Said it cost you everything." He bit through his lip again and spit a large crimson stone over the edge of the railing and watched it -- three stories south -- bloom like a rose on the sidewalk.

As he hung up the phone he fingered something in his right-front pants pocket. It was his Barlow. He removed it and looked at it for a long time. He wanted to hate it. He wanted to blame it all on the knife. 'Sheeeeit', he whispered, "that'd e be like blaming the rusty nail for goin through the shoe. Just doin' what it knows to do.'

He walked in the apartment through the floor to ceiling glass walls and they were waiting for him. Three of them. All of them ready for the Jackpot. All of them within twenty-one feet. Silly fuckers might as well be holding kittens, he thought to himself as he one hand opened the Barlow.

The Barlow. The one his daddy had give him.

The one that still had John Dailey's blood on it.

Then he went to work. Like a conductor. Like a surgeon. Like an artist. Like a madman.

He wished to god he was further away than twenty-one feet.

One of these days perhaps.

The Alphabet of Regret: Q is for Quiet

My cousin Amelia languidly stood there, young enough for her mouth to still be filled with innocent words. Looking tired was her form of grief, I suppose. She’d always sung with her mouth a perfectly sweet oval, her voice light as honeysuckle and bright as foil stars turning under a spotlight. That day was no different, save for the fact that the toes of her glassy black flats pointed straight at the head of our grandfather‘s coffin. When she finished her hymn she dropped her face toward the floor and gingerly took the five steps down that led to the the rest of our family.

Though we’d always made a show of humility, my family had always stood on ceremony.  It made sense to me for a time, until it simply didn’t any longer. ‘Pomp’ is the root word for ‘pompous’ and it took me a little too long (for my liking, anyway) to figure that out.

I climbed the steps then, turning to look out over the church stuffed to bursting with people that knew us. Cars had been parked as far as a quarter-mile away; there were that many of them. They stood along the back, along the sides, in the church foyer and down along the ten steps that led to the doors. Not everyone would hear me, but --as I was told later-- the impact of every last word from my mouth would thud through them, fixing them to where they’d each stood.

Mrs. Lovelace’s  fingers began gliding into the opening strains of  ’The Old Rugged Cross’.  It was strange, standing in front of all those people, waiting to sing while openly grieving.  I’d sung at my grandmother’s funeral eight years prior and had remained perfectly composed even though it felt as if my world was canting slowly sideways.  Now I stood strong emotionally, yet everything about me that was visible to the throng  packed into the church (there are so many people here, so many, too many, still not enough to bear witness) was betraying that. When my mouth opened, however, my voice emerged fluid and clear, even as tears made a scalded mess of my face.

I sang two verses, then fell quiet for as long as it took to collect my stomach. Gripping the ancient lectern, I raised my face to those expectantly awaiting me to rain sincerity down on them. I was sincere, alright, and I began to speak.

“Many of you remember me as a child, because I played with your children and grandchildren when we were very small. You remember me the way I was before my mother and father moved us far, far away from this place. The distance kept things locked in my throat that I should have released over the years. I can’t possibly remain silent here today.”

Then I brought the steaming guts of it out; shit and bile --and yes, the wild and acrid tide of fresh blood--  came with them, flowing down over the altar, gushing in wild flourishes down the aisle, splashing over the feet of the people gathered there to pay respects to my grandfather, to mourn with his children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren that were in attendance.

“I remember all of you, too. I recall how you turned a blind eye to the suffering of my grandmother and her children. You all knew. You knew that he was nothing more than a refined drunkard, predisposed to carousing and whoring. I know he has bastard children sitting here in this room, eagerly awaiting a share of what’s left, hoping he set aside a crumb for you.

“This whole town was impacted by my grandmother, her sweetness, her patience and compassion. You failed her, because you were fully aware of how he withered her regularly under his fists, how she took her own beatings as well as every one that he might have meted out on his children had she not stepped between them. Why would you allow it to continue?

“You knew and you turned your heads, you sniveling lapdogs, you graceless cowards. You held your tongues because he held your paychecks. You consigned yourself to a monster and I despise you for it.

“There is no grace in me today; I feel no mercy toward you. I’m hoping with everything I’ve got that you get to gladhand my grandfather for all eternity, perched beside him in Hell.”

The room, then, had changed: Commiseration became consternation became condemnation. I beamed at all of them, my smile beatific and my eyes full of blame. In the calm just before the explosion of voices you could have heard the Quiet drop.

The Alphabet of Regret: P is for too many parantheses, Prince, plus other things

There was a moment when his fingers snaked around her wrist that she considered yelling out her safe word.

Motown Philly.

The walls of her apartment were as thin as her mother had been trying to make her for years ("This half of a half a sandwich has made me so full! Why, I'll likely be satisfied until breakfast tomorrow!" she'd often say, serving up a side of guilt the girl would enjoy while downing her own 12" sub). Surely someone would hear a girl laying down some alarming new jack swing from apartment 312, right? When they did, one of two things was bound to happen. They'd either rush to her aid (preferred)(assuming things took an unfortunate turn, of course) or they'd bust in and then break out into a bit of that sweet four-part harmony (tempting).

(Boyz II Men...going off...not too hard, not to soft...)

Who could blame them if they were tempted? It was an awesome safe word (Kudos, me!). So much better than the one her best friend had chosen.

Bookkeeper.

(No offense, bookkeepers, but having triple doubles in your job title does not a slammin' safe word make)

(I should stop using words like 'slammin')

(I wonder how long he's going to keep his hand there...)

(I could really go for a sandwich soon.)

(afterthought)

Yeah. Motown Philly.

Never mind that (technically) her safe word was two words. Never mind she'd never in her life had occasion to slip one (or two if one was being technical) into conversation before (except for the time when her friend came up with 'bookkeeper,' of course)(Bookkeeper? Please...). Oh, and never mind the fact that the man whose fingers were cuffed around her wrist at this precise moment like so many chains of love hardly seemed the type to warrant a safe word. She'd secretly rolled her eyes at his unfortunate decision to wear a cardigan sweater the night they met for the first time, for God sake!

("If I was your girlfriend, would you let me dress you? I mean let me pick out your clothes before we go out?")

(Hey! Maybe I should change my safe word to something by Prince!)

Starfish and Coffee.

Diamonds and Pearls.

Little Red Corvette.

Three words. OK, well, you can never be too safe when it comes to safe words.

(Jesus, I am WAY too wordy...)

"What?" he asked.

"Huh?" she countered.

Senses. Perhaps she should come back to hers. From the top! There had been some kissing, which (in case anyone was interested) is where she enjoyed her kissing to commence. Then, just as her hands had started to Columbus their way to the (amazing! mysterious!) new world he'd set before her, he'd grabbed them with his own.

(we return now to our two lovers nestled on the couch)

"I said I'm sorry it might be a bit smaller than you were expecting," he repeated.

There are a handful of times a girl wants (nay - expects) to hear something like that. At the moment, however, she could only think of a two. One involved sticking to the plan of a solitary safe word (but not 'bookkeeper'), and the other had something to do with being served only half of a half a sandwich for lunch.

(Full for the rest of the day? Please!)

"I'll be the judge of that!" she responded good naturedly (because that's what you should probably do when a man starts sweating some shortcomings, right?) Trouble was, who was she to judge, really? Goldilocks? No. (No matter how many times she might have been asked to dress up like some fairy tale character over the years.)

(Or that time as a slutty nurse. Or that other time with the glasses and the book and the 'Oh, it looks like you have some overdue library fees!' business. No. You do that kind of thing once and you're stuck ALWAYS having to do it...). She'd only been in this position with two other men before (though not at the same time)(awkward), and neither one of them left her with the skills that made her qualified to lay this kind of comparison down.

(although she was willing to lie if necessary)

(Like she did to the one guy who warned her it was probably going to be too big. You laugh when you hear that kind of thing, she told her friends later. Every guy thinks he's giving you the biggest one, and you smile and assure them you can handle it, 'But damn if I didn't jump back and maybe scream a little bit when I saw it the first time. It was like a full grown grizzly bear or rabid wolf jumped out at me!' she told them)

(Great. Now I'm Little Red Riding Hood)

She didn't have to stretch the truth, though. This one wasn't kidding when the package he'd been keeping sheepishly tucked near him was finally put on display for her.

(Petite. That's what I'd call it.)

(Like Prince)

("Maybe you're just like my mama. She's never satisfied.")

(See? Show me one time when a little Prince doesn't work in a situation?)

(Well, except for MY mama, whose apparently satisfied after eating half of a half a sandwich, but whatever, Prince. Whatever.) Except petite wasn't a good name for it, really, so over the course of the next several months, she took to calling it by several different nicknames and endearments to show him just how enamored she was (and to perhaps boost an ego or two here and there).

Kraken.

(for the releasing of)

(obviously)

Thor.

Robocop.

(that one made no sense and was therefore short lived)

Tony Stark.

(even more so)

Papa Smurf

(totally not appropriate)

Slash.

("Welcome to the jungle, baby!" she'd say)

("What does that say about you?" he'd ask)

("Probably nothing very flattering," she'd concede)

Spike.

(which she fell into using after a particularly long weekend spent watching seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer back to back)

In the end, they agreed on Phil (full name - Motown Philly)(which of course meant she had to pick a new safe word)(Darling NIkki? Potentially confusing, but perhaps...), and regardless of the time of day or how tired he might be, he'd come enthusiastically each and every time she yelled his name.

Motown Philly was, without a doubt, the best damn dog she had ever been given.

(even if he was a wee bit smaller than she'd have picked if she'd had anything to say about it)

O is for Other People

It’s easy for me to remember your face. All I have to do is look at you long enough. Give me five minutes and then I’ll know each line and shadow. Five minutes, maybe seven and I’ll have enough to wear your face like a mask over my own face when you walk away.

I draw pictures of strangers for fifteen bucks. I could be doing more, but I’ve never tried, so I draw pictures of tourists whose names I will never know.

I see faces the way that most people remember the smell of bread or cinnamon: a mother tucking them in with toast and sugar, say. The smells of my past and this city right now? They are equally lost on me; I only see. When I pack up the easel and brushes and charcoals, I walk home the same way every time, past restaurants sputtering grease and garlic, past subways spewing sweat and piss, but I smell nothing, I remember nothing.  I see only noses and lips and eyes. Just a face upon a face upon a face that I know and yet do not know.

The nose is the most unique. Even identical twins will have slight differences in their noses -- a subtle twist or nudge to one side – and they won’t see it until I do. There are only five kinds of mouths, at least technically speaking, but lips can be tricky. The eyes are easy.  It’s the eyeballs that make the challenge and I don’t mean color. Every gesture of the eye comes not from the skin but from the bulge of muscle behind it. An eyeball looks one way and a hundred muscles move like ripples across the face. I draw that one face made in that one moment but I have memorized all the others that flashed in the split second before that one smile. I can’t help it.

I see faces the way other people hear songs: a lalalala can shotgun them back – to what? Maybe a funeral, a dance floor, youth? I don’t hear anything when I walk home: five blocks then a right past the liquor store then one block past the fire station and then the alley to home. I only see. I only see scars and freckles and the lines on her face where she slept so hard on her pillow last night. I only see faces of other people. I don’t smell ‘em, can’t hear ‘em, don’t know what they feel like.

Sometimes, the faces of people I draw flash through my sleep. Each face so perfect in its imperfection and each eyelash still so exact in my mind that in my dreams, I can remember how they laughed – I can hear it! – and how they smelled like chicken wings – I can smell it! – and I can remember how they threw their arms around my shoulders. They were so happy to be patiently seen. In my dreams, I wrap my charcoaled fingers gently across their backs and hold onto them and whisper in their ears, “it’s okay, it’s gonna be okay…”

In real life, I just stand there, my shoulders hanging my arms like cloth, like armless sleeves. I let them hang there; I let them hug me. After I draw their eyes, I’ll never look into them again.

How could I? After the paper fades or gets lost or shoved into a glove box, their desire to be known and gazed upon won't go away. After the mouth, it’s the one thing that is the most common in people: the sweet wish to be known and seen. My adoration, my gift, my cheap gimic -- it is temporary and flimsy like chalk, like charcoal. 

I can’t love them all. I can’t love any of them.

The Alphabet of Regret: N is for Nearly

My weak heart leapt — a bird, winnowed by hunger, discovering the cage door suddenly open: confused, overwhelmed, excited beyond its capacity for joy. I felt it shudder within me, and then fly free.

In those seconds, as they stretched long and my field of vision shimmered and bloomed rich with warm colors they'd never beheld before, I stopped myself mid-breath. Pausing, tasting the weight of the air on my tongue, sensing the slow and careless pulse of blood across my skin, willing the moment to stasis. Knowing even in the moment that I could not succeed, that my will would fail me and that - in pulling a great draft of new and sweeter airs deep into these folded chambers in my chest - the press of time would press beyond me, pulling away this now, this forever instant, this first blush of wonderstruck awe as you brushed that thin wave of dark hair from your face and your eyes flashed up and open and the entire room filled with light.

You were angry. I felt an intruder, a fascinated witness: that such rare beauty might be seized in such fine outrage. Your cheeks flushed bright in warning, a bouquet of ripe strawberries spilling across the snow, and even from a distance I imagined the heat radiating down the slope of your cheekbones like an avalanche of tender-scented molecules thrown into sudden frenzy, crazed and alive with the kinetics of you.

I envied them.

You spoke aloud a woman's name, and your eyes scanned the room as if seeking a target — as if some great switch had thrown into a brilliance a pair of incandescent kliegs of the softest blues, the subtlest greens, the sweet hazy grays of wind-shifted mist in those last seconds before sunrise, before dissipation, before vanishing, lost and gone forever 'neath the flood of visible light. Walls softened and warped under your gaze. Shadows fled. Motes of dust combusted in spontaneous ecstasy. Other visitors (there were others) shifted uncomfortably, as though trying to escape judgment. And for that fraction of a second that I felt them sweep over me - immobile, immaterial, a shade of a man draped over furniture - something shifted and swelled within me, pressing against my cage of ribs, suddenly desperate for escape and for the chance (the sliver, the dream, the hint of what might have been a wish) to recapture that glow, that first moment I saw the moon fill the sky.

And the name. Not the name you spoke, but the voice that gave it shape, form and function. The crisp, clipped syllables that tumbled from the cool, pomegranate crescents of your lips like lemmings seeking the sea. The something slight and throaty and low buried in the intonation — the suggestion of a laugh buried within the anger, a riddle wrapped in an enigma hidden in a cadence that would, could, should sculpt stanzas and sonnets and stories. Or inspire them. 

And my skin tingled and rose from my bones, as though in the presence of strong magnets or electricity — subject to forces of strange nature that would defy the solemn weight of substance and lift me, in whole or in part, toward the near shores of heaven. I felt a stranger from the familiar trappings of flesh, and suddenly realized: This is the shock of recognition. This is what I was meant for. And the tumblers clicked into place and the lock tumbled free and I looked up, my lips drawing wide into an unfamiliar smile, and watched the gate swing wide and all I could think was: such a beautiful day.

It was such a beautiful day.

We watched you, standing there at the edge of the room, long and regal and commanding - the fabric of light wrapping around you, bending to your will, pulsing in and out in time with each bright and radiant throb of your pulse - and as you drew a deep breath we heard a sound like water ceasing to flow. And we waited, enraptured, incapable of any action but reaction, four triggers trembling in anticipation of your next razored glance, your next sharp word, your next subtle exertion of pressure and influence that might set us into motion and spinning into wild and unanticipated tangents at velocities just shy of the speed of sound. It felt terrifying, and exhilarating, pregnant with the weight of a new life eager to take form and grow large, then larger than any life we'd known before. That I'd known before, at least.

(I could only presume I was not alone in this, in knowing myself a tumbling, jagged blade of stone suddenly captured in orbit and bound unexpectedly within the tender confines of gravity. I could not have been the only one to feel this way.)

And your lips parted, and I saw the ghost of your tongue rest - only for the briefest instant - along a glacial ridgeline of teeth, as if preparing to speak some great and unknowable secret bound in the sinewy vines of L's: love and life, loss and Leviathans, lessons and lessenings and limbos we feared to leave behind.

In my chest, folded wings quivered, almost imperceptibly. Stirring with the promise of warmth, and oxygen.

And then the entire world shifted on its axis, and your eyes met mine. Unbidden, without thought, within the space of that single heartbeat, the cage fell behind.

Leaping, not looking. Lighter than air. Lifted, as if by joy.

This is beginning, is what I felt.

And your eyes stayed with mine, finding something unknown but knowable.

This is beginning.

And then you turned away. Turned, and walked away. 

I watched, the space where you had been. In the periphery of my vision, I saw the door. It was open. I did not follow.

This is what I remember.

I almost spoke your name.

"M" is for "My Bad"

For fourteen years, she had lived a monotonous, married life, with a man she refused to fuck unless she could picture, of all people, Mel. That was until he decided he didn't like her "type".  "Sure he was drunk when he said it but isn't that when the truth really come out?", she thought as she drifted back to sleep.

Minutes later she awoke with a start. "Dammit", she yelled, as she took a look at the clock on the side of her bed. She had twenty minutes to get ready for her date.  She needed to shower, shave, get dressed, put on her make-up, walk the dog and check out the guy's profile just ONE. MORE. TIME.

"Actually," she thought, "I don't have to shave. It's not like he's gonna know because there is no way I'm sleeping with him on the first date, right?", she asked herself, ultimately ignoring her own question.  This was because she knew inside if he was good looking she would likely have to have sex with him.  She'd been single long enough to know that finding a man you wanted to sleep with in New York City was like a one bedroom apartment for less than $2000.00 a month.  A rarity and criminal if you were to ignore it.

She quickly hopped out of bed. Not for the first time, she sat down in front of her computer with her nose pressed against the screen as she tried to look at her date's  face from every different angle even though he'd only posted one photo of the left side of his body. "Well", she thought, "he clearly has at least one arm, his cheek is blemish free and his eye is a beautiful greyish-blue.

"All really good signs", she reminded herself. She'd been reading the book, "The Secret" every night before bed and knew how important it was to stay positive if she had any chance of actually getting what she wanted out of life.

By the time she'd turned on the water in the shower, she was back to her old self, reminding the rest of her conscience that "The Secret" was a bunch of bullshit and she knew that this date would in pretty much suck like all the others.

As she rinsed the conditioner out of her hair, she practiced her "speech" yet again. "I"m sorry, I'm just not feeling the chemistry." Smile, look down, try to blush if you can.  That was the dance she did every time as she had  yet to meet anyone she wanted to know longer than it took for her to order her decaf cappuccino, extra foam, please.

She parked her car and headed towards the cafe. From across the busy thoroughfare she saw him. Her hear sank, "Oh my God, it's Curious George," she thought. Not literally, of course but the closest a human being could be to looking just like him.

Unfortunately, she could see him waving to her, clearly indicating that he had seen her as well. She could feel the words begin to form in her mouth, "I"m just not feeling the..." and then suddenly, without warning she yelled out to him, "I'm sorry! You can go now! I'm good!" With both arms raised, hands waving simultaneously like a lunatic trying to hail a moving cab, she began to walk backwards towards her car, continually yelling, I'm really sorry! Goodnight! Sorry! Really! Bye!"

And then,

she was flat on her back, pain ricocheting through every part of her head. As she lay there, staring up at the cloudless night sky, she could hear people asking her if she were okay. However, she was now too busy trying to spot the big dipper to answer them. 

Suddenly, she felt someone's breath on her face. The person began stroking her forehead. It was a man, telling her not to move, that they had called an ambulance and that he would stay until they came. "I'm fine", she insisted. "No, you're not," he said. "You're bleeding and you need to see a doctor." As she reached her arm back to touch the back of her head, she suddenly got a look at the man's face realized it was her date, "George".  At this point, she was pretty sure she had stopped bleeding as whatever blood was left in her body had now rushed to her face. "Had he heard what's she'd said?", she wondered. "Oh God, I'm so horrible," she thought, "this poor guy."  "I really appreciate you helping me like this," she said. "Of course," he responded, "I'm just not going to walk away, you're my date," he chuckled.

  "God, I"m such a bitch", she thought.