Babes

        I go on commitment with Ivan. It's just the two of us and we arrive separately. I ask him to speak first. He begins his meandering life story at birth and traverses his fractured tale in a scratchy, near monotone old world accent. I just close my eyes to listen and I'm already asleep. Up there in front of a room full of alcoholics and drug addicts expecting God to use us to deliver a message of healing, I show them how to relax. God's got this. After more than a decade in and out of these meetings I know at least one thing, I'm safe here. Ivan speaks for damn near half an hour. I have no idea what he says, but I wake up to everyone clapping.

        The secretary for the group we are visiting calls out for the chip club. The familiar chant counts up this time. Sometimes it's down. A few under three months and then a lag until we get to ten. Stacia picks up a gold chip for ten consecutive months. Bingo. I don't have it in me to entertain these drunks for another half hour. My strength is in concision. I wish more people understood they don't have to speak for twenty or thirty minutes to have an impact.

        I gently ask Stacia if she will share the remaining time with me and tell us her story. A big smile blossoms on her face and I know right that God is real. She needs this. When women share they often get past the egomania and right down to the heart of how they feel. Not always, there are always exceptions to the rule. I think I dated one or two of them.  Stacia tells a good story without even trying.

        She goes through how she got here rather quickly, which is great. All that carnage is pointless to so many of us. She moves on to the present times, that's where we live after all, these are the feelings which trouble us the most, inspection of these yields the most fruit. Her child has asked her something which has struck her to the core and in her words bears the mark of the voice of God. Her husband hasn't gotten clean yet. He works a lot. He's emotionally abusive with their two children.

        The scenario involves him fielding some relatively elementary questions from a six year old. He blew up. God knows what sent him over the edge, what inner voices and turmoil broke him down in front of a child, but something went haywire. The child was upset. Why is daddy mad at me? She had been treated as if she were part of a conspiracy to rob some thirty year old man of his joy or his peace in this life. You are not a gift. Daddy loves you, but you make it so hard.

        Then Stacia tells us how her relationship with her six year old daughter has changed in the last ten months. She tells about sitting down with her child and saying, daddy didn't mean it. He just doesn't know how to talk to you yet. Emboldened by her vulnerability the child shared something with her. She said, mommy, since you've been going to those meetings you've changed. You're a lot more patient, and you treat us better.

        Stacia is welling up. Her voice is quivering, but she delivers the message without choking. I can feel a warmth and a light spreading throughout the room. She has touched all of us.

        After she finished there was about five minutes left of the meeting. I summon my vast inwit and with a sonorous toll tie the meeting together with a few descriptions of my attitude and appearance before getting sober. My presence is evidence of a complete 180, or perhaps orientation on an entirely new set of axes. I said very little, everything had been said. I thanked Stacia and Ivan and closed the meeting to ringing applause.

Forbidden

Still, without faith in the modern work,

Some vapid hollowness is my culture.

Only morons could champion fascism with such glee,

Begging to be given the best lines in a script.

People complain about parking just about everywhere,

As if it were a meteorological phenomenon,

And not lemmings in steel carraiges.

We complain about our patterns,

Never in those words.

Setting up stand-ins and fall-guys,

To deflect onto, as if seeing ourselves were forbidden.

Aliane

There is a wave of colognes and perfumes that sticks to the paint of the door of The Bouge. The heavier base notes gum up the sidewalk with their Tonka bean and sandalwood, animal musk, ambergris. Across the underside of the awning which juts like a giant erection into the street float the ephemeral gifts of orange and plum blossom, burst angels. In between is the haze of humanity going in and out. The glass panels and stainless hardware reflect the ghosts of pedestrians. Flashes from the sunset crisp over tan bodies in linen and polyester as the man-sized microscope slides on hinges swing back and forth like pendants in the early evening, hypnotizing some passersby who’ve never even heard of art before but are now determined to get their boredom rocks off by looking at stuff they can’t afford and don’t understand. The cost of a lifetime of therapy, multiplied by the time spent reading self help books, could be invested in one single rectangular glassless window into a world that never changes, but somehow is never the same twice, and there would still be just this empty feeling like, are we really here at all Jessica? How many fingers am I holding up Randolph? Did you order the groceries? Nah, I figure we'll just eat out this week again. But, what about the toilet paper? That’s what poor people's dreams are made of Jessica.

        Aliane holds Boris’ arm like a princess being escorted to a rural town fair. His cologne smells of animal piss, not like a vagrant or an unkempt person with too many pets, but like a stallion before monsoon season. It hasn’t rained in weeks; he’s been pissing straight down between his own feet, a dehydrated dark yellow liquor, and it splashes his hooves and marks with no fucks given his masculine supremacy over the rest of the stud team. The mares can smell him from ten miles away and they weep. Though the average person can’t comprehend the sensation in quite the same way. Your typical human smells a collective of musk and urine and calls it a grassy barnyard; they get the top notes of rope, flax, seed, filtering in in their conscious way. Boris himself, he isn’t aware of it, not the way he is aware of his conspicuous package between his well-fit legs.

        Aliane and Boris are a two glass cocktail of shared and broken strands of DNA, patched together by trauma renewed continuously in a dramatic patterning like a library book that never gets returned, never gets read, and gets lost under the back seat of a trade-in vehicle. Their chromosomes choose to recombine inside each other instead of forming foetal inheritors. They are just too perfect to try and follow up with sequels. But all that creative energy and data has to go somewhere, so they hand it back and forth between them creating a kind of genetic solipsism for two, a dead end road for a murder-suicide.

        Jeremy is in the lobby waiting, she’s just texted him they’re there. He kisses them both hello. His shirt is a sexy tablecloth open to his navel, molasses in sunlight, a patch of black curls like a dark oasis. Eyes like an angel spilling the agape of the divine thick as a port. Hands that would use your underwear to smear it into some sort of abstract bloodwyne finger-painting on the concrete floor, an ironic cleanup performance.

        They’re here he whispers, throaty and constricted with excitement.

        They?

        You know, Them. He makes his eyes bulge a little and rubs his fingers on his thumb.

        Of course, them. Well, that’s great.

        Oh honey, I’m so proud of you. My brother, the limelight. She looks at him warmly, and with concern for his well-being becoming more evident as the milliseconds transpire. He’s definitely going to die tonight. The look in his eyes, it’s barely eight pm and he’s all watery and blasted. Torn in two different directions by the quiet and the loud. There’s no inbetween. It’s all pillows and thorns. Poor thing.

        Jeremy sees that she sees that he’s veering, careening wildly, and he says to break the spell well, come on in and have some hors d’oeuvres and wine bitches. Don’t forget to look at the art on the walls, that’s part of it too his smart little round glasses, his teeth showing proud, lips pulled back in ecstatic reverie. Blasted.

        Boris still sees the teenage renegade black boy with a pink mohawk spitting on the expectations of his white fundamentalist christian parents. They loved him, but they never knew him. hey kid, this is great! excellent work.

        Thanks B, but you should really look at it first. Nice tie, is it new?

        Yeah, it is, thanks. I will He’s never known how to talk to people at these things. Which is funny right, cause talking and arguing and back and forth, that’s what he does. He’s a master strategist and a ninja when it comes to coded legal systems, but these artsy types have him flagged for a bore and he knows it. There is literally nothing he could say that they aren’t somehow prepared to reflect back at him as some form of criticism he’s too insensitive to apprehend. Even Jeremy, who he’s always sort of admired, thinks of him as the butt of some junky humor. You’re just too straight to get it Boris.

        As promised by Cheyenne, several notable dealers are present and have taken Jeremy into their personal confidence tonight. His work is ‘striking, moving, startling, and disturbing’. In art it doesn’t so much matter if the emotions are positive so much as that they are strong, and his work is forte a thousand times over. ‘Exciting, both on the surface and on an unspeakable level’. Sounds good right? He’s beaming through a speedball and spectacles.

        Jereme takes Boris from her, I’m just gonna borrow this, accessory. Despite Boris’ feeling like a joke among the arts crowd, Jereme looks at Boris as a kind of sexy mentor. Aliane is aware that her husband is about to get poked, prodded, and pumped for legal advice, albeit in an arena in which he has little interest or expertise. But, Boris can handle himself. She wanders to the left, through an arch and into a large room full of splendid looking people. The work directly to her right resembles a papal death squad marching against a sea of naked children. 10th century tiaras on towering robed men. It’s not so much that their hardened cocks are visible or vulgar, as they are implied in the bulging of the robes at a certain height. Their fatherly faces show a range of emotion from smug to patronizing to some sort of lustful self-loathing. The sea of children, cut, bruised, black eyed, teary and angry. They stand as warriors, portraying various arcs of attack, defense, psychological resistance.

        Hey slut. Would you eat my pussy for a dollar? Candace has snuck up behind her and the word startle doesn’t quite cover the extremity of the sensation.

        Hey, what?! Oh! I’m glad you’re here!

        Yeah, I’m glad I’m here too. How’s your glutes feel after this morning?

        I’ve done worse. I think that class was weird though, something about it was challenging, but not in a physical way.

        Yeah, the guys a freak and he’s fucking your brother.

        Come on, now you’re fucking with me!

        I’m. Not. Look. She points across the room to a gigantic man in a pink tuxedo and ponytail, slightly balding.

        Do you think he’s still farting?

        Jesus, I hope so. I mean, he must have had broccoli for breakfast to work up that kind of ensemble at ten am. They smile, Candace laughs, her gaze penetrating into Aliane.

        You okay?

        Aliane looks away yeah, of course, why wouldn’t I be?

        Well, how’s your elbow?

        Oh that? Relieved her surface tension hasn’t been broken yet.

        Well, yeah, that’s a pretty big deal. You...there’s something else. Candace is like a homing missile for disturbances in the emotional equanimity of those around her. Empathic, sort of, or just really keen.

        Something… Aliane locks into her eyes.

        Yeah? Candace stares back, their faces dancing through meaning.

        This is more...you know...

        I do know. Are you…

        I don’t know. Judge myself incessantly? Keep secrets?

        Candace chuckles a little and makes a poor thing face, to which Aliane scowls in reproach. I’m good...they’re just, thoughts.

        They’re feelings too babe. Pandora’s box, a white man’s perspective. Don’t let that fragile male ego imprison you. Let yourself be.

        I don’t really need a lecture hon.

        Hey, I’m sorry. If you need me, or a referral to one of my peers in the field, …

        Aliane lets out a blast of breath just before Boris arrives and hugs Candace, gives her a peck on the cheek. Aliane sees them naked and fucking for her pleasure. Her eyes lock with Candace’s briefly then flit away to the painting, then to Boris, who is waiting for a compliment to his tie. What do you think?

        We’ve barely had a chance to look at the work yet. We were busy discussing your sex life. Aliane grimaces under her mask.

        Ha, that could take all night.  He glimmers, adjusts his tie.

        Yes, of course. She pokes Aliane with a glance. Aliane burns into Boris, etches the equation: We will go home together, happy, content, comfortable. We will not do experimental sex things with my friend. Behind him, her mother is standing, giving him a reach around. She blinks her eyes to clear her vision. The image doesn’t change much. It’s a portrait of a woman who looks almost identical to her mother, aside from the red pumps and fishnet stockings, the come hither lips and the encircled fingers around an airy implied cock. The cognitive dissonance staggers her backward. Boris and Candace both turn to follow her eyes. They are slower to comprehend. It’s Candace who first says, that your mom?  Followed by Boris touching his chin.

        How had Jereme found this woman buried burning beneath a starched white blouse, pleated brown skirts, demure fawn flats, the string of pearls, the collection plate passing through her sterile lap. Penitence. Shame. He had found her long since dead self, once open like the legs of the woman in the painting. Mother, wife, whore. The woman who surely existed the night Aliane was made, before she remade herself. Aliane studies her mother’s hips, vivacious and round, her breasts, small, natural, lopsided and sensitive. Her lips, red with paint, another circle as she appeared to blow, taunting the repressed world. Her cunt, open, blossoming with menses.

Aliane can’t move. She’d like to, but her spine is somehow broken. Her feet are numb. Is she even standing? Jereme runs over, She’s beautiful, isn’t she? Did you know about the photographs?

What?  The sounds in the room shrink away into a distant echo. This is from a photograph? Boris sees her unsteady look. He puts a hand on her arm, as if to transfer energy to her. Jereme, not knowing she’s failing hard to reconcile his words in her mind, continues to describe an old box of photos they found after she died. Who was it that was ‘helping’ him then? Steve? He looks at her for some confirmation that she remembers Steve. You know, handsome guy, about this tall (holds his hand high above his own head), Steve. Well, it doesn’t matter who it was. We were cleaning out mom’s place, remember? You couldn’t be there, something, what was it? Medical? I don’t think you ever told me, but, you know, I got you sis. There was this box of photographs none of us had ever seen. Mom hadn’t thrown them away. I don’t think dad took them, he probably never saw them. I think they got together when she was about twenty five, no? So I guess before then, before the Jesus and all, there was this little experiment. I guess I didn’t tell you, well, I knew immediately what I wanted to do with them, and I guess I...didn’t know if you’d let me. I guess finding out this way…

It’s a bit of a shock Jereme. You just. You should have told me is all.

I know. I’m sorry. His forgive me eyes, laced with antagonistic chemicals, touch her where they always have, in that spot that makes her cry and laugh, and though she’s still shaking, they hug again. He’s not dying this time at least. Now, come on, check out the rest of the exhibit! Have some wine, that’s what these things are for.  He presses a tiny package into Boris’ hand and wades into the crowd like deep water, squeezing shoulders and pinching asses. Boris looks at the four pills, Quaaludes? Better go look these up in a stall. Kind of glad, Aliane might need some help tonight.

Candace is transfixed in a little alcove by a tiny canvas, about 8x10. Her head obscures the object of the painting as Aliane comes from behind her. I think I’m gonna buy this one.

How do you always know when I’m coming. God, just once I wish I could sneak up on you. Such a bitch. Candace turns, smiles, and when she does, reveals the subject of the small painting. Isn’t it lovely? It is a mattress fire burning romantically in the moonlight. For the second time tonight already, Aliane is speechless, but this time she feels she has to hide it. Feels like if she tried to explain, even to Candace, there would be nothing left between her and the asylum.

It’s spellbinding.

Boris joins them. He sees the painting and laughs, funny huh?

What’s funny?

We had one just like that across the street on Friday. It wasn’t on fire, but it would have improved the situation He takes Aliane’s hand and puts one of the pills into her palm. Hands her a glass of Chardonnay. Winks.

Jereme?

Jereme.

Speaking of the mattress, this morning you said you’d called a guy and he took it away, but when I left the driveway, there it was in all its vibrant glory Her tone modulates from accusative to sarcastic over the life of the statement. 31 words to drop from assertion to deflective bitter humor.

I said, that’s what I’d probably do and that you should thank me for taking care of it, cause I will. His correction to reality is accepted blinkingly.

Giving out samples Boris?

Only in exchange for sex.

Hard sell. Honey, make the man give me one.

Come on Boris.

Jeez, here  He fumbles and drops the package. Three bright blue doozies go squirreling off in three different directions. Ah fuck me.

We already decided no on that one, Candace says while unabashedly taking off her pumps and getting to her knees to swipe one of the pills that had gone in her direction. Boris kind of shrugs. Barbs not really his thing anyway.   Hildred can sense when he’s not at peak awareness, same thing with weed. Earlier coming back from Mike’s house she had started bucking and braking without provocation simply because she knew she could get away with it. You’re just high Boris, there’s nothing unusual going on here. When you swim with the sharks, even those loyal to you can sense weakness and will attack to maintain the hierarchical structure. This is why Boris doesn’t own a dog, too much image to keep up. It’s hard enough to play boss already without yet another pair of watery eyes looking up at him, waiting to turn red at a moment's hint of giving in. A couple glasses of wine are a respectable distance from paranoia, not an abdication of rationality. A couple of barbs though? He’s likely to end up in Mexico by the time they wear off. That and he really should stay in touch for Aliane's sake. She is fragile tonight. Just about anyone would be turned upside down by this exhibit, nevermind the personal level to which some of the artifacts invade her consciousness. That one portrait isn’t the only one. There’s ma Smith leaning over a pool table giving a ping-pong show, but with the cue ball, her cunt a negative space like none he had ever imagined. Over here she’s smiling, like it’s a joke while she manually excites a doberman, the animals lean figure and short hair leaving nothing to the imagination, but somehow also, everything becoming imaginable. This one is a close up of her face visible from the top lip up, and she’s choking, tears running from bloodshot eyes digging eyeshadow arroyos in her rouged cheeks, not of sadness, but of frustration at her limits and determination to overcome them. Her eyes flashing defiance like a strobe. He can’t help but be turned on. He’s not sure if he should feel bad about it, but his brain is working up a defense. Telling Aliane would be like hitting her at this point, so he is keeping his wisest remarks for discerning company.

There are other subjects. Jereme is prolific and hasn’t had a show like this before. Little red dots are popping up all over the place, the sound of coins falling into a jar, a bell on a register, the secret knock on a dealers door multiplied to infinity by innumerable resources. This kid’s gonna die tonight, I know it.

He looks up into an eyeball staring into his soul from the tip of an enormous erection. It’s crying tears of excrement and the shaft is pulsing and covered in gang tattoos. Startled he steps back and runs into one of the wait-staff. He turns to apologize and sees Jenni Ho shaken, but smiling at him. Hey Boris, does this mean you didn’t like your salad?

Jenni, right? I’m sorry. That was very clumsy of me. Side-gig?

Yeah, that’s okay Boris, you can always tip me extra next week. I gotta make ends meet, so I have this gig. She looks very different in her caterers tuxedo than in her father’s pizza joint. Boris can see that she is a mature woman, twenty-eight maybe, not eighteen like her punk clothes make her seem. She notices that he sees her differently. How’s your wife, she okay?

Boris is startled again my wife...she, uh yes, um better, it’s complicated.

Oh boy.

Yeah, that about covers it They both laugh.

Jenni pulls out her phone.I'm not supposed to have this on the job, but I just have to check in with my little sister. She's home alone.

Oh, is she alright?

Typically, but I gotta send her a text just to check every now and then. Big sister stuff.

How old?

Ten.

Big spread, anyone in between?

Huh?

There's a lotta years between you and your sister.

Oh, yeah. Well, I was born in China. We moved here when I was about twelve. Our parents decided to take advantage of the fact there's no one child policy here. I have a little brother too, he's almost my age, but that was it for most of my childhood.

I had no idea, you speak English just like you were born here.

Thanks. I don't think so, but it's nice of you to say.

Hey, while you have your phone out...

Yes?

Take my number and give me a call sometime. Let's continue the conversation.

Okay, sure! She hands him her phone open to an empty contact. He types with his back to the room. Her eyes are over his shoulders, scanning. Thanks Boris! I'll text you.

Alright Jenni, talk later. He watches her slender feminine figure, a work of art clad in tight black satin pants and vest, the scent of her lavender rich perfume still stuck to him, played with his nose. She looks back over her shoulder before disappearing through the swinging doors of the galley, their eyes meet again, she looks away. He licks his lips with thirst and stops another server to grab a flute of champagne.

The Future

The day I changed the future,

 there were rain drops rippling puddles.

 I read a book without buying it.

 Something broken in my heart healed itself.

 I probed the difference between diversion and distraction.