O my asthmatic princess, wringing your hands, your knock-off purse full of neatly printed scheduled coffee dates. Then there was salty Kathleen, who thrived on confrontation, who grew with each ‘piss off!,’ who sprawled on rank sofas and drank Pepsi while sitting in the tub. Thank God she won’t be there! I can see her coming through the gym doors like a tank through the palace gates in Saigon, flying high on her own mix of Jägermeister and milk, screaming, ‘Where is that stupid fag?’ And, finally, Pamela, who I used to love but who now says she has to try to work things out with her husband. I asked and she just laughed, saying, ‘I really love reunions, except for the part about murder being a crime.’ That is so her. ‘It’s been so long,’ they’ll say before turning to say, ‘It feels like only yesterday.’ My father thought the best way to fight heart disease was to simply ignore it, my sister yelling about his yellow pills.
I’m not so sure his approach wasn’t wise;
my mother sits patiently by herself,
makes her own tea, her own little cheese plate,
and still laughs when a TV ad begins
‘Do you have diarrhea?’ Through the years,
while the economy boomed and bulldozed,
while computers made life much easier
for secretaries and Jar Jar fans alike,
while doctors fought AIDS and cancer of the neck;
while populations across the globe soared
and citizen geeks fought to save marshland
and limit greenhouse gasses for the sake
of the dooming tear in the ozone, while
geneticists promised the dawn of the clone
and the Hubble Telescope took pictures
of galaxies that folded neatly into
other galaxies, I took time to perfect
the art of the bummed smoke, the hindered dream,
the delayed comeback zinger, the late lunch,
the jealous funk, the revenge fuck, hollow
vows, saggy jowls, long happy hours,
debit cards, loose-fitting pants, nighttime soaps
(don’t bring up the past), the hyena’s laugh,
blaming it all on nice people like you.
That was me in your medicine cabinet.
That was me hanging up just as you picked
up the phone. What’s the theme of the reunion?
‘Always and Forever: This is Us!’ or
‘May God save us from more remakes of
Planet of the Apes?’ It’ll just turn out everybody’s all dressed nice, showing off how our spouses taught us not to say ‘nothink.’ Spruced from long apprenticeships in the malls and cubicles since we left sweet Hoodlum High, we know how to deny the neighbourhood. Good guys all, we’ll hear, all shy and quiet, nerds and geeks who forgive the only school in the state to be closed due to ‘benzene poisoning.’ We’ll transform poor to cute-poor – cartoon-Brooklyn poor or Rydell High poor. Will there be awards? I’d like to see that. Can I put my name up for Most Improved Sense of Persecution? Naturally, the award for Most Exactly Where We All Thought They’d Be has to go to Charlie G., who smashed his Chevette into a pole. Would I see that guy – you know, the guy I once punched in the stomach for five delinquent dollars – get up, fight the piercing feedback of the microphone, accept his lame prize as Nicest Guy, and weep for ‘the best times of our lives’? I’m sure Nicey’s all set up: probably doing lines off a whore’s thigh while the whore’s tax attorneys look on. I will be at the reunion. I will dance to T’Pau and I will do impressions of old teachers ’til they pry me off the bar. But there will come a time when it gets dark. The lights against the wall will hypnotize. In frosted mirrors behind the Pernod I will see couples dancing and realize, for me, partying’s no different than waiting for a late flight out of Newark: despite the sequined dress of yearned-for Sasha-May, despite the welcoming handshakes, I opt for the vampire who lives behind the wall; he has leather chairs and a rifle range, a pet tiger he likes to call Earl, a desk into which to carve the words It’s over. Alone, I’ll smell the factories again and retrace the steps to the shops of my youth, where they sold candy made out of petroleum and just one brand of soft, gleaming white bread. I’ll see shiny elbows on my sport coat and, just like that, all attendees will seem like fat rich kids on ponies. They never ask if the pony’s back is sore, they only say, ‘I wanna lollipop!’ Wouldn’t it be great if the nicest girl, and I mean the most legendary Jesus-Loves-Me queen, showed up all divorced and brandy-weary? And if we excused ourselves to some long-lost stoner’s enclosure made for bra-strap fiddling, and we’d satirize everything, including Sasha-May, including my own dreams of a one-off and, looking in her green eyes I’d say, ‘We better get back,’ just as the band returned to play ‘Footloose.’ ‘I thought that was more of an encore,’ I’d say, tucking my shirt into my belt, and sensing our shared booby-prize despair, she’d take my hand and gently remind: ‘Koo-Koo, the nice thing about crawling into the woodwork is staying there.’
Dinklihood
What is there to do but solder wires
and listen again to Pink Diggly Diggly? What is there to do but admit I’m tired and move to the west side of East Smelly? Should you find the ghost of Natalie Wood would you recommend my earthly boner? Should I lose all to a European bid will you not call me the Prince of Posers? One’s value is not just social pride, which I should always try to remember when seated by a laminated sign that explains the Heimlich Manoeuvre. Drink up, Pasquale, I have an abscess; drink up, Dingus, I have scalped your tickets.
Architeuthis
‘A good student will always learn to laugh
at old professors,’ Dr. Miracle
wrote on my paper about Dorian Gray. I had no idea I’d ever be on the other side of his maxim and I regret making fun of how he’d say, ‘Now, let’s dive into the wild that is Wilde.’ I wouldn’t have taken that shady job teaching writing at the local college if I didn’t have innate confidence my VCR could tape afternoon soap operas. Coming home to refrigerator pudding and envelopes I’d slip into the trash, I loved the way soapers slammed gin tumblers and how monologues weren’t botched with impertinent interruptions. ‘Jeremy, I’m leaving you,’ Lainie would say, and Jeremy would look on like a fat seal as she finished her I’m so sorry sentence. I marked papers the way Dr. Miracle did: with flinty, sarcastic remarks in red pen. The first class I ever taught was on Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. I paced the room, punchy, and my real teaching ‘career’ started when, frustrated with my hedging, one kid asked, ‘Don’t you think Hedda’s a total bitch?’ I did not roar out of graduate school and wait in the halls of the MLA; I gave up on finding that teaching job – much like Emilio Estevez gave up on making hit motion pictures, or the way Ray Parker Jr. gave up on dominating the Billboard Top Ten – and I doddered sessional to sessional. Once, when I still believed in stepping stones, I had to teach an Intro to Lit class, absurdly early in the morning to kids who wanted to be dental hygienists. They would just look at me and sneer, ‘With teeth like that, what could
