The Poet: Chapters 30 and 31

 

THIRTY

 

The Modern Era Gallery was packed like I’d never seen it. Kale and Astra types of all races were practically pressed into each other with their bottles of IPAs and plastic cups of wine. Also present was the kind of aging hipster element that infested any get together that had a whiff of free booze and social protest in the air. I couldn’t even make out most of the shitty art on the wall. Either Killian had really gotten the word out about the reading, or people hadn’t received word that Godfrey Whitt had stiffed them all. Did poets riot? I had no clue. Most of them didn’t even write on a regular basis. I knew that I wasn’t in much of a mood to riot from what I’d been put through at the job.

“This one is called the Death of Art,” Jackson Urban said, as he prowled around the stage. Someone had draped an American flag behind the mic, and people taped doctored pictures of the orange-faced billionaire all over it. They gave him little Hitler moustaches to go with his little hands and rumored little penis. I took a hit on my pint of vodka and stood there with all of the hipsters playing on their phones, letting Jackson take us all to church.

Death of art

this

death

this society

we are wrapped

like tight cellophane

so tight we cannot breathe

that orange-colored man

the new plantation man

the….

            And pretty much on and on like that. I went back the merchandise counter, which was far enough away that I didn’t have to whisper like an asshole. I scanned the loot.  Everyone, as always, was represented but me. No book for the big reading.

            “Fidel is running late,” Gigi said. She popped up out of nowhere. “What do you want, Rand?”

            “I always say world peace. But I keep getting bitch-slapped by the world, so it can all burn. I’m single now, so a piece of ass would be better than world peace.”

            “Then you’re at the wrong table.”

            I leaned over the counter. There sat the cooler, the jugs of Carlo Rossi Pisano. “Perhaps I’ll take a glass of wine to start.”

            Gigi sighed and rolled her eyes. She went to fetch my wine.

The confidence man, Jackson bellowed from the stage

The slave driving man

The noose holding man

The...

            “Sure are a lot of men,” I said, when Gigi handed me my drink.

            “Are we done here, Rand?” she said. She seemed sullener and not her usually prickly-perky self. “I’m not in the mood for you tonight. Besides I’m technically Team Larissa.”

            “Were we together long enough to divide our sycophants into teams?”

            “It’s easier than saying I simply don’t want you around me right now.”

“You know for a lady who just got an agent you seem a touch perturbed this evening,” I said. “There’s nary a squee about you.”

            “I don’t want to talk about agents or books either,” Gigi said.

            “And why the hell not? If my shitty little book were here right now, I’d be tossing them around the joint, slapping people on the ass with them. I’d certainly be using one to try and hook up with one of those little poet chicks wrestling with their phones on the floor. Fidel can’t have all the fun.”

            “You’re too old to say phrases like hook up.” Gigi shuffled around books and had a pull on her own wine. I downed half of mine. “Besides I’ve learned that people are jerks when it comes to other people getting book deals.”

            “You just learned that people are jerks?” I said. “People are nothing but jerks, especially here in America. We breed them. Then we send them out to procreate and buy homes and cars and block aisles in grocery stores, to stand in line at ice cream parlors, to have picnics in parks, to vote, to eat brunch, to stop on subway steps during rush hour to play on their phones…I could go on for hours about how jerky the United States of America is.”

            “I mean it’s not like I expected people to jump for joy when I told them about my agent,” she said. “But I certainly didn’t expect to be laughed at. Or have someone roll their eyes and tell me it was luck. I didn’t expect abject hate, or people calling me a sell-out on my blog.”

            “Abject hate is just another slice of apple pie here.”

            “Apparently apathy and jeering are big with these people.” Gigi crossed her arms. “I could say it’s unfair. I go to all of these readings. I happily sell books for everyone. I’ve put up fliers for readings.” She had more wine. “I retweet their posts and like all of their Facebook and Twitter crap. And now this happens for me and I get eye rolls, and people telling me that I don’t deserve it because I’m so young. I told one writer that my book was YA. She literally like broke out in laughter emojis at me and said, oh, YA, like I’d written a flier on good dental health or chronic diarrhea. And then she sub-tweeted and called me a rando on Twitter because I liked some literary agent’s Tweet.”

“I can’t even tell if you’re speaking English anymore.” Gigi poured me more wine. I dangled my plastic cup over the tomes of genius just to see how risky we could get. Maybe I’d get sloppy and no one would have a book to sell. “You can’t worry about these saps. Jealousy and the desire to belittle run rampant in these two-legged animals. They’re defining human characteristics. Like willful ignorance and knowing sports stats but neglecting basic common knowledge. This sort of spineless forked tongue bullshit runs rampant amongst this so-called element. We’re talking about people who write one poem a year but call themselves a poet at least seven times a day.”

            “It just sucks,” she said.

            “At least you have Jackson…for what he’s worth.”

            “So, like because I have a man or I’m coupled I’m fine?” Gigi’s eyes bugged out from behind a pair of new, shapely glasses. “Jackson is like being the worst one! When I told him how people reacted, his response, his literal response to me was, what did you expect? Like I should’ve expected people I’ve known for a long time to be bitter douches? Like I’d somehow betrayed this indie aesthetic by working my ass off to write a book and, God forbid, actually try and sell the thing beyond Dive Bar Press. Like are these people working artists or is this just some kind of incestuous scene?”

            “I like to think of us as an autonomous collective of idiots,” I said. “Especially people who read poetry from on their cell phones.”

            “Like you get shunned for actually producing saleable art,” she said. “Maybe I should’ve written poems about the man, or the orange-face billionaire, or some lurid novel about my ex-boyfriend’s small penis and then thought about what a genius I was while I tended bar all night and couldn’t pay my bills.”

            “You really think you could get that much traction out of writing about a penis?” I asked.

“Don’t you?” Gigi sighed. “At least now I know how Tricia feels.”

“Well, someone had to eventually dig deeper into that soulless pit of ego. Better you than me, kid.” I had a good pull on my wine. “At least you’ve become wise to these people real quick like.”

“Whatever, Rand. You never liked Tricia and you always mock me for the YA stuff.”

“I was honest from the start,” I said. I always enjoyed egging Gigi on, but she just looked so sad I had to drop the shit. “Look, I give up. Congratulations. I do know how hard you worked on your book….it makes me jealous because I can’t get beyond a single line. I’m prone to mockery when I’m jealous. I formally bow down to the YA Gods. Hell, it’s usually the only stuff I see adults reading on the bus these days anyway, when they aren’t playing games on their phones. I still think teenagers are assholes, though.”

“Whatever,” Gigi said. “I’m still Team Larissa.”

“So am I.”

Jackson stopped reading his poem and the applause exploded. In typical fashion he crinkled the paper into a ball and tossed it then stood there arms crossed like a defiant militant. Poets and their quirks. Hopefully Larissa had the Wi-Fi checked before her set. I looked at Gigi and she was just shaking her head at Jackson while he took a selfie from the stage. She was right. The people in this scene were assholes. They were little rock stars in their own bubble. They called what they did a career, like Monday morning they weren’t going off to work at some shitty office and/or retail job. Fucking poets, for sure. I knew Gigi didn’t like me much, but I sort of hoped she made a million bucks off of her book and couldn’t remember a single one of our names by the time she turned twenty-five.

“Little Bukowski,” Fidel said. He was in full Disco-Don mode: black leather jacket and gold chain with seemingly no shirt underneath; hair shaggy and down to his shoulders; big old beard; sunglasses indoors; a couple of pale-skinned, raven-haired, billowy dressed goth poet ladies with him. “What do you think about the book?”

“I’m not a religious man, Fidel,” I said. “To be honest I only joined Catholic Youth Organization to meet girls…but I was overweight and they didn’t want anything to do with me so…”

“Not the Bible…your book, dude! Your tome to the tavern! Your litany to the local! Your peon to the public house, brother! Your book to the bar. Your…”

“Please don’t say manana, please don’t say manana…because I don’t see my fucking book here, Fidel.”

We both scanned the merch table as Jackson and Gigi began having a quiet argument on the other side. “Well, why don’t you put them on the table, Little Bukowski? Do not, and I repeat, do not be shy.”

“I would need the books from you to do that,” I said.

“I gave you the books,” he said.

“Unless you can skip between universes and we’ve done this same exact thing in some parallel world straight out of the wacky shit Gigi writes, you did not give me the book.”

Fidel put a hand on his chin and nodded knowingly. “I sent a package to your pad, man. It should’ve arrived today.”

“I was at work today, Fidel. And minus a foray into various over-priced bars and the liquor store, I came straight here.”

“You don’t work from home?” he said. “Wait…what do you do again?”

“Hey pal,” Killian said to me. He came up to us with Millicent Xiao who actually was wearing a Team Larissa t-shirt. They were holding hands. Frances Dunne was up on stage burping into the mic and reading one of his own poems in lieu of introducing the next lackluster bard. “Got your email. Rough day at the old job, huh?”

“I got suspended…again.” I killed wine numero dos. “Apparently missing meetings really is a big deal after all. Something called time violation.”

“Poetic justice, Rudy,” Millicent said.

“It would’ve been,” I said. “But then they gave me the branch manager job.”

“Come again?” Killian said.

“Turns out the big shots and union heads were already on their way down to the branch to “relocate” my boss, Sheldon, for basically being old and incompetent. They just happened upon Willy having a nervous breakdown, and decided to kill two birds with one stone. My clerical head will run the place while I’m on my five-day paid sabbatical…and the rest is history, a truly American tale.”

“You’re officially the man?”

“Rand the man,” I said. “Complete with two newbie librarians to train when I get back.”

“I hope they mutiny on you by Easter,” Millicent said

“Do you do telemarketing work?” Fidel asked me. “No, that’s not right.”

“Let’s see the book,” Killian said. “Though I’m sorry there won’t be a store to place it in. Millicent and Jackson helped me haul the last of the merch out today. Needful Things is no more.” He looked around. “Although with the crowd I have here tonight I might actually break even and live to promote again.”

“A silver lining to the shit storm of Godfrey Whitt,” I said. “But I don’t have my book.” I pointed at Fidel who was still deep in thought. “Genius here sent the box of them to my apartment instead of just bringing the thing here.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Not this time.”

“If I had any desire for humor in me this evening, I’d laugh at you,” Millicent said. “Instead, I’ll take a secret and quiet joy at your bad luck, and save the laughter for when I really need it.”

“Gee thanks, Frida Kahlo,” I said.

“An orderly in a hospital!” Fidel said, like he’d hit the hammer on the nail. “A…an…office drone, man…a copy boy…a wine clerk?”

Millicent looked away from her phone. “I just texted Larissa your misery…and about your sudden and obviously unwarranted promotion. Old habits are hard to break.”

“Where is she?”

“Scouting funeral homes with Henry Winkler,” Killian said.  “Apparently he thinks it would be a cool place to do a Halloween-based poetry reading.”

“It’s March,” I said.

“Aren’t you unemployed, Little Bukowski?” Fidel asked.

“He’s a librarian!” Gigi and Jackson shouted in unison, before going back to their squabbling.

“A librarian!” Fidel laughed. “That’s rich, bro. That’s something, man. That’s like being a carpenter or a cobbler, or something old fashioned like that.” He turned to his ladies in waiting. “Can you imagine it? A real live librarian.”

“Did you bring other poems?” Killian asked me.

“Nope,” I said.

“And a fool as well,” Millicent said. “Typical white male who trusts in a system that has always supported his hypocrisy.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m really setting the patriarchy ablaze by not stopping at home to fetch my poems folder and my fucking mail.”

Kilian looked at his watch. “I had you going up there in an hour. I could probably shuffle some people around and...”

“You want me to go all the way down to Bay Ridge to get the books?”

“Isn’t this what you’ve been on about all along? The Asshole at the end of the Bar?”

“I guess, but I…”

“I’d drive you Little Bukowski,” Fidel said. “But I don’t have a license or a car, and I got some shit to do here tonight. I’m meeting that Carolina paramour of yours because she had some falling out with the big publishing boys, and there’s this poet dude from Portland who wants to talk to me about his manuscript. The thing is all about the death of identity politics…and the search for an authentic taco.”

“Ten bucks he’s white and has a beard,” Jackson said.

“Fidel, you’ve given me so much already this evening,” I said. “I’d accept nothing less than a swift kick in the ass to get me on my way.”

“No need to thank me, brother. It was a pleasure publishing that book.”

Christ, I thought. I wasn’t in any mood to get back on public transportation. Modern Era was getting worse with people than it had been when I arrived, and I feared traversing the length of it. It was claustrophobic and hot. The doors to the gallery were open but that wasn’t helping. Another unseasonably warm night in the end days of America. People were milling about everywhere in their too-tight jeans and too-tight shirts, and ironic facial hair. I could scarcely remember a time when I did my best to avoid those types. The halcyon days of just sitting in bars. And now I was some poet dandy so hungry for his book that I was willing to hightail it all the way down to Bay Ridge, half-drunk, for the pleasure. I’d become soft.

“Yo, yo, yo…what up?” I looked back toward the stage and there was Todd-de-de-de prowling it in all his lanky doofus genius, holding out his cellphone, ready to do his shtick. “My name is Todd. But I usually go by my rap name, which is Todd with three D’s. Todd-de-de-de.” The idiots laughed. The whole stinking lot of them. “I’m a’goin’ get this shiznit started on point, but first me, myself and I, that is, Todd-de-de-de would like to read you this par-tic-ular poem…. ah, just to show ya’ll what I’m all ‘bout. Poker with The Joker…”

It was time to leave. I hoped when the climate truly went beyond the point of no return and New York City finally fell below sea level that the deluge took all of the poets first. I headed for the door. On my way out there was someone with Fuck Godfrey Whitt written in black Sharpie on a t-shirt. Poetic justice…finally.

“Later,” I said, as I passed Carolina. She was outside smoking and playing on her infernal device.

She lifted her head from her phone. “What? No come on. No witty remark about me slumming om Dive Bar Press? No telling me you loooovvveee me?”

“Too tired,” I said. “Maybe I’ll play the fool when I come back from retrieving my book from the bowels of Brooklyn. But, hey, good luck with Fidel. If he uses the word manana, seriously consider self-publishing.”
            I started to leave. “Rand, wait.” I froze. There it was. It was going to happen after all. The last spark that started the fire anew. My moment of Zen. My movie ending. The reason I went through hell and back. “Are you really still pissed about the book?”

Deflate city. But then I shrugged it off. “Not anymore,” I said. “I was more pissed at myself for not getting the word down on my own, and I blaming others. What I’d taken to being a lack of ambition has suddenly become a way of life. And here I thought, after all of those years of drudgery, that I was finally on to something with writing. But better you than me to tell the story. I do have one question though. Why did you go to Cornelia Street last fall? I mean The Drunkard is technically fiction. I might be thick, but all you needed was a disclaimer at the beginning of the book…and I’m not big on litigation anyway, considering how often my hypocrisy seems to come up in conversation. You owed me nothing.”

Carolina laughed and shook her head. “I don’t know now. Back then when I saw you announce that reading on your blog, something in me just wanted to confront you. Like I had you built up as this big devil who took off and then wrote these poems like you were some loner hero.”

“I really hurt you didn’t I?”

“Um…no. I just thought you were a dick.” Carolina shifted. “But, like, I have this thing in me where I can’t let any kind of affront go. Call it ego if you will. And I build people up to almost super-villain status, and you just have this punchable face, Rand. God, I wish I could explain it to you how punchable it is. Like when you curl your lips into that smug smile and your eyes start to…”

“I’m slowly getting the drift.”

“I wanted to tell you off,” she said. “Tell you about the book and make you feel bad for how I was able to get you back. But now all of these months later I feel petty and stupid, especially with Godfrey and the whole major press fallout.”

“Fidel is good people.”

“Really? Manana?”

I shrugged. “All the same I can’t wait to see how you’ll get a swine like Godfrey Whitt back.”

Carolina winked. “Let’s just say there’s some notes on my computer about a philandering, pompous best-selling novelist with baby-dick syndrome.”

“You and Gigi should talk,” I said. We stared at each other for a bit. “Look, I don’t know when or if I’ll see you anytime soon, so I just wanted to apologize. For it. For everything. For accusing you of all that sleeping around stuff, and for shuffaloing off to Buffalo the way that I did. For being an asshole about your book. And…I guess…telling you that I was in love with you when that probably wasn’t even true anymore. Honestly, I think I’m one of those people who could never really love anyone. Like an asexual…but only with romance.”

“Are you having some kind of crisis, Rand,” Carolina said. “Because Larissa literally just texted me that you apologized to her via email like five times.”

“Fucking phones,” I said. “You can’t have an honest moment with anybody these days. Maybe we should take a selfie while we’re at.”

Carolina smiled slightly. “Just go home and get your book,” she said. “You can apologize by not reading any poems about me or my body tonight, you misogynistic asshole.” I started off but the voice came again “Oh, and Rand.” Again, the heart leapt. “I think your fly is down.”

I zipped and then walked off. When I got to the corner realized that I couldn’t remember where the goddamned G train station was located.

THIRTY-ONE

 

It took me over an hour to get home. And I was still in the same goddamned city. New York was too big for its own good. I could’ve almost made Philadelphia in the time it took me to traverse the length of Brooklyn. The weather had changed since I’d been underground. The unseasonable warmth had slipped away, and now the winds were howling as I walked down my steep street. Twigs and general Brooklyn rubbish were kicking up at me. A sign for the orange-faced billionaire went tumbling by a pavement full of glass bottles and dog shit. You could smell the faint salty air of the estuary as I got blown about. Sixty degrees by day and twenty degrees by night. Welcome to the new world order. The glass door on my building was shaking like an addict. But it was warm and quiet when I got inside my lobby. Wiping the debris from the outside off of me I could see my apartment door. There was a big brown box sitting in front of it, just as Fidel Pinochet had promised.

            I went over to it and sat down in front of my door. I had the last of the vodka of pint numero dos. I held the box a second and then started tearing away like some crazed kid on Christmas morning. In minutes I was holding my book, that motherfucker I’d worked my ass off to achieve: The Asshole at the end of the Bar in all its neon-soaked glory. In the end Fidel had used a semi-blurry picture of Rooney’s that I had taken years ago. You could see some of the guys milling about, their faces obscured by the blur of orange-yellow bar lights. I hadn’t realized it then but deep in the distance of the photo, between two arched and cackling drunks, was Carolina. Like maybe days or weeks before I knew her. She was hunched over one of her signet classics, her left hand covering her face. But it was her.

            It felt good holding my book…for like a moment. I can’t explain it but then this instant sadness came over me. I started thinking is this it? Is this what I wanted so badly? Is this what I thought about for over a year, what I pestered Fidel Pinochet about every single time that I saw him? I leafed through the book. The poems were mine but they weren’t. They were old. They were from another life that I’d lived and had left behind. Just like the shit I was writing now about work and Willy and Larissa. Those words would mean nothing to me sooner rather than later. I suppose such was the curse of making art, and then having it packaged for consumption years later after the spark of creation had gone out. Maybe people would find these poems interesting. Maybe they’d find some merit. But looking at my book all I could see was the passage of time, what had become before, and maybe what I wasn’t doing now. I saw age and deterioration. Talk about your anti-climaxes. Talk about your ennui.

            I heard the clicking of her heels, and then Molly Brown was around the corner before I could even get myself back up off the ground. “The poet,” she said, looking down at me. Boy she looked the tart of Bay Ridge: black mini, maroon blouse with some glitter on it. Molly was wearing suede, elfin fuck-me boots that went up over the ankles. The hair was fire-engine red.

            “You and Chico going bowling tonight?” I asked.

            She held up a small bag of garbage. “His name is Alejandro,” she said, as she swished her big, wondrous ass passed me to go and toss her trash down the chute.

I was alone again save the faint, clacking of Molly Brown’s boots, as they echoed down the hall. I looked at my book. Not one iota of joy. I couldn’t fucking believe it. I could feel no joy over it. How in the hell was I supposed to read any of this shit to a room full of people? And then ask them to buy the goddamned thing? If having my very own book couldn’t make me happy then what in the hell could? Misery more than writing was my art. I’d perfected unhappiness. Melancholy had been my line and I’d been following it for years. And I needed a fucking drink. I got myself up off ground, and had the box of books cradled in the crux of my arms like a goddamned football.

“And we’re not together anymore,” Molly said, as she came back clacking toward me.

            “That must be why it’s been so quiet and I have nary an eighties song banging around in my head.”

            “You haven’t been making much noise yourself.”

            “It’s break-up city around these parts,” I said. “I’m sure Jackson Urban is having himself a bad night too.”

            “Who’s he?”

            “Baseball player.”

            Molly smirked. “I didn’t know poets liked sports.”

            “We do. It’s sports fans that we hate.”

            “Isn’t that like a catch-22?”

            “It sure as fuck should be.”

            “Oh.” Molly unzipped this little pocket in her mini and pulled out this piece of paper. “Did you get this? It was like in my mailbox this morning. It’s from the building managers. It’s this big long notice about how residents aren’t supposed to feed the…pideons? Like what in the hell is a pideon? Are they talking about all of the homeless dudes up on Third Avenue? Because like I’ll give money and food to whatever pideon I want, Big Brother.”

“I think they’re using the fancy word for pigeon,” I said.

“I mean like why not write pigeon then?” she said. “Why get all like fancy about it. And I don’t feed those things anyway. Ugh, I usually try to run them over with my car.”

“I knew you were an animal lover upon first sight.”

            Molly pointed at the box. “Like what’s that?”

            “This, my dear,” I said, “is one of life’s greatest disappointments.”

            She tilted her head up. “It looks like it’s full of books.”

            I pulled a copy of The Asshole at the end of the Bar out of the box. “It is, in fact, a box full of books.” I checked us out in the big glass mirror in front of my place. The pop tart and the bum. “It’s my book.”

            “That’s right,” she said. “You’re going to be like the next Stephen King.”

            “It’s poetry actually.”

            “That’s right.” Molly rolled her eyes at that one. “Does anyone even read poetry anymore?”

            “Two hundred morons at the Modern Era Gallery can’t be wrong.”

            “Are you like excited about having this thing now?

            “Umm…sure.”

            Sounds to me like…”

But then her phone went off. Molly stepped a few paces down the hall and began arguing into her phone while she checked herself out in another mirror. Alejandro, I assumed. It really was break-up city. People couldn’t keep it together. I tried to take some comfort in the fact that I wasn’t the only one who botched up relationships, but I mostly just felt bad for everybody. Existing was hard enough, emotionally damaging enough, but inflicting yourself upon someone had the chance to go nuclear. It honestly surprised me that people went ahead and did this again and again to themselves. That’s why I was certain now that romance was never really in the cards for me. I made to head into my apartment for that vodka when Molly held up a finger for me to wait.

“Anyway,” she said, coming back down the hall toward me. “Sounds like you don’t seem too happy about your book, poet man.”

“I’m sad about the pideons.”

“Oh, big, tough guy can’t show a girl how emotional he is.” Molly rolled her eyes. “Give me a break.”

“All right,” I said. “I’m a touch bummed out. You ever want something so much, something that you think will fulfill you, but then when it actually arrives it just leaves you feeling hollow and blank?”

“Every time I get a boyfriend. My advice? Settle for getting drunk and eating Chinese food instead.” Molly reached out her hand for the book. “Let me see.”

I handed her a copy of The Asshole at the end of the Bar. “A year,” I said, as she leafed through it. “I waited over a year for this book actually. I thought it would mean something, you know? Like it would validate me, after all of the years feeling adrift and untethered to anything or anybody. All those jobs I suffered. All those people. All the shuffaloing from city to city from job to job. Just to get the poems down and put them into something real, something concrete.” I watched Molly reading. “This book was supposed to be my apex. But it came too late. There’s another sad sack job. Another woman is gone out of my life. Another dream has…”

“Dude,” Molly said. “You literally have a poem in here called Not Enough Lube to Grease a Saturday Night.”

“It’s a love poem.” I could feel myself tearing up.

She closed the book and looked at me. “I had you pegged as a pervert the first time when you had those splooged-covered jammies on…but I’m interested. I like smutty shit. How much for a copy?”

I wiped my eyes. “I’ll give you that one gratis,” I said. Molly glared at me. “It means free.”

“Pideons? Gratis? People like don’t talk normally anymore.”

“I blame the internet.”

She looked at the book. “Well…thank you.” Molly started walking away with the book. My first reader. But then she swung back around. “You want to come up for a drink, Li-barian?”

I nodded toward the box of books. “I’m actually supposed to be heading back up to Williamsburg to read and try and sell some of these things. Raincheck?”

Molly shrugged. “I don’t do rainchecks,” she said.

It always came down to shit like this for me; some moment of truth. To be or not to be, or some kind of drama like that. Molly knew what getting a drink meant, and so did I. Did I even have the stamina? After all that had gone down for me lately did I really need another mess? I needed to work on my shit. I needed to get my ass back up to Williamsburg and be the graciously funny, half-drunk poet on that stage and show them all that yours truly was as serious as all the rest, and not this fool that I’d somehow become amongst that crowd. But a drink sounded nice. I was always sucker for a woman in a black mini skirt and fuck me boots. I believed that creating a solid and steady fan base began by going one on one with people. Then there was the whole being a good neighbor thing.

“Sure,” I said. “A couple of drinks and then I’ll be on my way.”

“I said one drink,” Molly said. “I don’t need you getting all sloppy, Mr. Plastic Vodka jugs.”

“I thought I was the poet?”

I dropped the box of books back in my doorway and then followed Molly up the stairs. We had nothing to say while we headed toward her place. What was there to say? A little alcohol, a couple of laughs and maybe a lackluster, mutual, carnal exchange between two lonely, cis-gendered people on another lonely night in America was par for the course for millions of others. Why not Rand Wyndham? Why not Molly Brown? She stopped in front of her door. She spun and grabbed me. She started kissing me violently. She bit me once or twice. There were traces of rum and tomato sauce on her breath. I tried to get a couple normal kisses in but we ended up clanking teeth. Molly shoved her tongue in my mouth and smacked me off a wall. That’s when Gerhardt’s radio came on, softly at first.

“That man’s hearing is too good for his age,” Molly said, after she came up for air.

“At least it’s not I love the 80s,” I said. “Or, it could be worse. Good Old Gerhardt could be a fan of that orange-faced billionaire running for president. It could be him we’re hearing now.”

I went in for a kiss but Molly pulled away. “And what’s wrong that billionaire running for president?”

“Other than him being a racist, sexist, rapist, xenophobic philistine who’s unfit to run a common lemonade stand let alone this country…nothing, I guess.”

She moved away from me and slunk over to her door. “That man is going to make America great again.”

“By doing what?” I asked. “Comparing the breast sizes on thirteen-year-old girls while having his minions throw Muslim people into internment camps, after they gas all the Latinos?”

“You’re disgusting, dude,” she said.

“Says the woman defending America’s biggest sleaze ball.”

“You fag lib-tard.” Molly looked at my book. “I like don’t even want this piece of trash you call a book.”

“Well, I don’t want you to have it, you Nazi.” She threw the book down the hall, and before I had a chance to say anything else Molly Brown had opened her door, stepped into the darkness, and the lock went click. Such was life. I had my own vodka anyway.

“Bum,” Gerhardt said to me through a crack in his door.

Back inside my place I set the box of books on my table next to where Larissa’s overnight bag had been sitting for a few weeks, then set to pouring myself a good drink: double shot of vodka with ice cubes and just a splash of the seltzer then another splash of the vodka. The dinner of champions. I sat on my couch and checked the old watch. Hell, it was already heading toward eleven o’clock. I wasn’t some tired-ass geriatric but I knew I wasn’t heading back up to Williamsburg for that reading. I didn’t have the heart to read those old poems or even try and push that artifice of a book. Truth be told none of them would miss me anyway. Instead, I’d get nice and drunk and wake up again into the same, gray crumbling empire that was facing its final reckoning. Mostly likely I’d use the books for kindling.

I turned on the TV and there was the orange-faced billionaire on the twenty-four-hour news network. They were becoming simpatico. Old orange face was on TV talking about building his wall between the United States and Mexico, before telling some pundit how women should be punished for having abortions while a ticker underneath read how he was gaining the support of the KKK and the Neo-Nazis. The man sent a shiver down my spine because he was as American as apple pie. He was Uncle Sam. He was everything I always said America was, but hoped deep down in my gut that it wasn’t. The orange-faced billionaire was the walking, talking venom spewing embodiment of white male privilege and violence. He was misogyny run amuck; hates perfect specimen. He was steering the nation from its dubious founding toward uncharted waters. I only hoped that millions of us knew how to swim.

I shut the TV off and had a good pull on my drink. The wind rattled outside and trees shook like they were being strangled. I could faintly hear Gerhardt’s radio and Molly Brown pounding around her place. My flannel shirt reeked of her cheap perfume. Where were we now? I wondered. I mean who were we? As individuals? As people? As citizens? As a nation? You couldn’t even get laid because of politics. We were coming down to dust at light speed, and you just wished that someone would jump in and make it stop. Or that someone could say the right word. Some orator. Some speech writer. Some poet.

Suddenly an idea came to me. I slugged down my drink and got myself off the couch to pour another. Then I lumbered into the bedroom and sat down in front of the machine. I turned it on and the screen shown blue-gray in the darkness of the room. Cars zoomed up and down the street as the wind continued to wreak havoc all over Brooklyn. Somewhere north all of my so-called friends were reading poems and fighting and loving, and getting on with the business of living. I clicked on Microsoft Word and a white screen came up. Molly Brown turned on her TV and I could faintly hear the orange-faced billionaire as he talked. And as that good old, goddamned dog barked from across the street I killed my drink and set to typing. The words came out like they always did, in the same order, in the same form; that familiar juxtaposition of words upon which I’d build my temple to one-hundred thousand of them strong. I looked down and read what I had written.

I had a sick feeling in my stomach.

 

THE END

 

The Poet : Chapter 29

TWENTY-NINE

 

 “I was online looking up stuff on that disgusting, un-American protest at the billionaire’s building the other day,” Hazel said to me. “And I saw this.”

She turned her computer screen and sure enough there was a photo of me, Larissa, Kale and Astra, amongst the multitudes, in a stare-down with the cops. “I always hate how fat and bloated I look in protest photos,” I said. “It’s like you have this image in your mind of how you think you look in them…but then you see a photo and the reality sets in and…”

“Well, I hope HR doesn’t see this.”

“Believe it or not, Hazel, we do have a small amount of personal autonomy when not on the clock.” I figured I’d leave out the shittng in my pants at the rally part of the experience.

“Contrary to what rebel rousers like you think, the police are here to protect us. I say people who are worried about the police and surveillance cameras are obviously up to no good.”

What was there to say to that? America was Hazel De Vitis’ country and fools like me just lived in it the best we could. I was too depressed and didn’t have enough money in my bank account to leave. I checked my computer while Hazel sat there ranting about the government and leftist conspiracies. I looked for Larissa’s little green light but it wasn’t there. It hadn’t been for a few days. An apology email I’d sent her went unanswered. But she was up to plenty of hijinks on Facebook and Twitter. Apparently, a Harry Potter movie fest and homemade Egg Creams with Gigi were all it took to get over yours truly. Meanwhile my liver was as hard as a rock from all of the vodka I’d been syphoning into my system, and I was back to a steady vomiting streak. People just handled things differently, I guess.

 I looked over toward the stacks where Scott was shelving YA books; YA books once meant for Lena Alvarez, who’d ghosted the library for sure, and was most likely working that waitressing job. The world was such sadness. “Rand.” I looked up from the screen and Oleg was standing there. “I have new eBay plan.”

I sighed. My work day. Same as it ever was. I thought to ignore him, but I knew Oleg would just persist. It was best to just shut the mind off…insert something witty here. Even I was tired of my act. “What are you doing now, Columbo? Buying bootleg driver’s licenses?”

“I don’t want to discuss driver’s license anymore,” Oleg said. “Is sore spot.”

“Then how about the Pacific Trade Pact? Syrian refugees?” I looked over at Hazel’s computer screen because she was being oddly docile. She still had that article up on the orange-faced billionaire and she was looking at his scowling, neo-fascist visage the way I imagined she had her David Cassidy posters back in the innocent 1970s.

“Oleg is suing library union over license,” he said. “Is better than suing city of New York. At least that’s what television and billboard lawyer says.”

“Well, you’ve assimilated quite well into the United States,” I said.

“I take citizens test next year.”

“You know you can’t buy your citizenship on eBay,” I said.

“I buy nothing,” Oleg said. “I study. I learn all about America, and then I…” But then one of our patrons began smacking his head off of a table, and it was time for him to play keystone cop again. “Is no smack head! Is no smack head!” He shouted en route.

“I don’t want that man learning our state secrets,” Hazel said.

“What exactly do you think is on the citizenship test?”

The door to the program room opened, and two dozen kids whose parents had signed at least two dozen customer service forms saying that I’d traumatized them, came flooding out into the library screaming and seemingly fine. A few seconds later good old Willy shuffled out with guitar in hand, like he was fucking Neil Young. The man treated his sporadic and lackluster children’s performances as if he just finished playing a grueling yet brilliant set at Coachella. I kept the bundle of complaint letters and emails from parents hidden from him; although there was nothing that I could do about the Yelp comments.

Willy came over to the reference desk and stood looking down on Hazel’s breasts. Eleven in the morning and if I wasn’t already so hungover I’d be ready for a drink. “I’m leaving now,” he said to me.

“What do you mean leaving,” I said.

Willy shrugged. Again, the urge struck me to rip those moustache hairs out one by one. “You know. Leaving. Departing. Going. Absconding, if you will. Disappearing. Exiting. Vamoosing.”

“I’m leaving on a jet plane,” Hazel sang. Willy strummed his guitar.

“So, I’m just going to, you know, go,” he said.

“You can’t just leave, Ranger Roach,” I said.

“Says the man who doesn’t even come back from meetings,” Hazel said.

“Yeah,” Willy said. “And I have a doctor’s appointment. What’s your excuse, Rand?”

“Self-preservation,” I said. “As per every single conversation we’ve been having since the fall you should’ve told someone before now.” And the creep into hypocritical, asshole boss territory continued.

“Do you tell Sheldon when you skip out on meetings?”

“My leaving meetings are… a spontaneous act of civil disobedience.”

Willy shrugged again. Not a care in the world. “I’m a sixty-two-year-old man,” he said. “I’m done telling people like you when I’m coming and going.”

Sound logic to me…but still. “Let me tell you something your pot-riddled head probably doesn’t know. You’re leaving me in the lurch. Scott has a class visits all afternoon, and Sheldon is heading to, coincidentally enough, a manager’s meeting. I’ll be here alone, all-day, on this desk.”

“Sounds like you should contact the union,” Willy said.

“I crush union!” Oleg shouted, from across the room.

“It is your problem when you work somewhere and people rely on you, and you don’t bother to tell them you have a doctor’s appointment. Life doesn’t work like that.”
            “It worked like that last week when I was stuck here until six because of you of calling out,” he said.

“I thought Sheldon was cov… and that’s not even the same fucking thing,” I said.

Willy’s eyes bulged. “Did you curse at me?” He looked to Hazel for confirmation, and she was nodding away. “Because I’ll go to HR.”

“I should be the one going to HR,” I said. “Your list of demands. Your telling me you won’t work weeknights. Your calling off on Saturdays.” I sniffed. “And what’s that in the air? Hmmm, smells like weed. Do you smoke weed, Hazel?” She shook her head. “I’m certainly not high? Maybe Oleg over there burned one this morning? Gee, I wonder whom it could’ve been who got stoned in his car and then was put in charge of entertaining small, defenseless children.”

“At least he didn’t vomit,” Hazel added.

“You threatening me, Rand?” Willy said. He was getting heated. So was I. A man could only take so much even if that old stoner had me pegged on truancies. “I don’t take kindly to threats…especially from someone who smells like stale whisky.”

“You’re looking at someone who doesn’t really give a shit today,” I said. “And it’s stale vodka…at least most of the time.”

Willy looked at Hazel with an air of exasperation. “Another curse! Another one! Do you believe it? Do you? I’m calling HR as soon as I’m out of my doctor’s appointment!”

“You’re not going to that appointment, dude. You’re going to be sitting right here at this desk telling people where the bathrooms are, and listening to Oleg’s plan to take over the nation via his eBay account.”

“I’ll file a grievance against you!”

“And I’ll sue you for loss of enjoyment of life!”

In lieu of punching Willy Abelman square in his jaw, I got up from the ref desk and started heading toward my office. I was done. Done being a punching bag for the poets of the world. Done feeling guilty over Larissa. Done with Carolina’s unanswered emails. Done being a whipping boy for Willy Abelman and his insane drug-addled mind. It was time for a changing of the guards. Jill and Sheldon’s voices were getting louder.

“Where are you going?” Willy shouted.

“To tell on you,” I said. “You want to act like a child, man. I’ll act like a child.”

“Well, I’m going with you to tell on you too!”

I reached the office first and caught Jill holding a fresh stack of Sheldon’s fast-food bags. She was shaking them at him. The bushy-haired milquetoast had no recourse other than to slide further and further into his chair. How many days of my life were going to be this exact mouse wheel of common occurrence? How many more hours of redundancy could a man take? “Rand, tell this idiot once again about these damned fast-food bags,” Jill said, when she saw me. Then she looked at the floor. “Ants! Ants!” There was another trail of ants going behind my desk all the way to Sheldon’s.

“But…I…” he started.

Then Willy bust into the narrow office and stormed past me. “I want to file a formal complaint against Rand Wyndham,” he shouted, finger waving in the air and guitar in his other hand. “I want him written up! I want a file sent to HR!”

“What is that idiot going on about?” Jill said to me.

“Willy is having delusions of grandeur again,” I said. “Did he tell either of you about his doctor’s appointment?” They both shook their heads. “Well, he’s got one and he’s leaving right now.”

“You can’t do that,” Jill said to him. “We’ve been over this and over this and ove…”

“Rand verbally assaulted me,” Willy shouted. “He used curse words. He used invective that I’ve never heard before. The whole library heard him. Patrons were complaining. There are small, defenseless children here! Now are you going to do anything about this, Sheldon?”

“You can’t just leave,” Sheldon lisped. Willy slammed his guitar down on my desk and threw up his hands. “You have to give people notification. Especially supervisors…at least I think so.”

“Are you people not listening to me?” Good old Willy paced in a small circle. He stopped and pointed at me. The fool got a little too close. Then he started wagging his finger in my face, which I didn’t fucking appreciate at all. I was once again getting dangerously close to head-butting time. What was it between me and public libraries that brought out the violence? “This man swore at me. He cursed me. He’s making light of a medical condition of mine, which I’m unable to disclose right now, yet he skips meetings and doesn’t come back to work! He’s not taken my scheduling suggestions at all. Rand Wyndham is poor supervisor and a lackluster librarian. He does not get along with staff or the patrons, and most likely he’s abusing drugs and alcohol.”

“Remind me to get you to blurb my book if it ever comes out,” I said.

Jill stood there with her arms crossed over her green sweater. She looked bored. Sheldon looked like he was going to piss himself. “Are you done whining,” she finally said to Willy.

“Are you going to write it down or am I?” he said.

“What I’m going to do is call security and call HR, if you keep this up, because you’re not right in the head. You haven’t been right in the head in years. Not since your wife left you.”

“W-what’s that got to do with anything?” Willy shouted. Again, he turned on me and started wagging that finger in my face. His breath smelt like a can of rancid sardines. “It’s Rand, can’t you see? Every day I come in here and he harasses me. He bullies Hazel and is trying to have an affair with her. He bullies Scott. He sexually propositioned Lena a few months ago, and now she’s gone because of him. I caught her crying in the staff room.”

“You know she was upset about sch…,” was all I could get out before Willy started on his path toward disgracing me again.

“What about all of those meetings Rand misses?” He said again. Doctor fucking redundant. “Huh? Huh?’ Willy looked from Jill to Sheldon. “All that information that was lost. Valuable, valuable library information. I mean who knows what knowledge he’s kept from us.”

“I could build you a mean Lego bridge,” I said.

“Rand should be fired just for that. My back still hurts from hoisting those dictionaries the slave driver forced me to lift by his absence!” Willy shook his head. “I tell you both it takes all my strength to come in here each day and not kick him off his throne! Not sock him right in his smug face or strangle him on the way to his bus stop!”

“Did you just threaten your supervisor?” Jill said.

“I…” Willy said. He was suddenly shaken out of his trance-like rant. His finger froze mid-shake. “I…did I….?”

“Rand, leave the room.” Jill craned her neck to Sheldon. “You, do something productive and call security and HR.” She walked over to me and took my arm to lead me out of the room. I hadn’t realized it but my chest was heaving and I was breathing so fast I thought that I was going to pass out, or have that heart attack Jackson so wanted to see me have. Jill led me out into the library proper where Hazel, Scott, Oleg, and at least half a dozen library patrons were staring at me. “You.” Jill pointed at Oleg. “Get your big, goofy ass in there and keep a watch on Willy until someone better shows up. He’s liable to strangle Sheldon at this rate.”

Oleg’s eyes lit up and he smiled. “Is showtime,” he said. Then he marched toward the office.

Jill led me into the work room and she shut the door. “Well,” I said. “That got a little tense.”

“You sit down at my desk,” she said. I followed suit. “I want you to stay in here until we have him removed from the building. I don’t care what noises you hear. What shouting. You stay in here. He can’t go around physically threatening staff.”

I shadow boxed. “I doubt Willy Abelman could take me,” I said.

“That’s not the point,” Jill said. “This ends today. I’ve been telling you for months, and look what happened! And since neither you nor that wooly haired milquetoast will do anything, I’m going to call HR and have them relocate Willy to another branch. Let him be someone else’s problem from now on.”

“But who’s going to look at Hazel’s breasts?”

“Never mind your nonsense, Rand.” Jill shook her head. “This is serious.”

She was right. “That stuff Willy said…about me?”

“The stuff that nut bag said ain’t gonna hold water. You have an entire staff here that like and respect you, and I’m including Hazel in this. We all know what a waste Willy is. He’s been a waste for years. And now he’s causing problems by skipping work and probably sending your writings to HR. The only reason he’s not gone now is because of the union. But that changes once you threaten someone…now it’s bye-bye town.”

Then I was alone in the office awaiting either salvation in the form of a fleet of rent-a-cops, or else certain death if Willy really popped a gasket and shot up the whole staff. This was America after all. I gave a quick glance to the emergency exit door just to make sure it was unlocked. Shit. I knew that Willy disliked me, but I had no clue the depths of his hatred. I was willing to bet that if he were allowed to pontificate further, he would’ve drawn the typical comparisons between me, Mussolini, the orange-faced billionaire and Hitler. It always came down to Hitler between staff and their supervisors. I’d faced many a middle-management Fuhrer in my day.

A little while later, the office door cracked open and Hazel came creeping in with a stack of picture books like she was twenty minutes late for a baptism or shitty piano recital. She went over to a desk and started fumbling around with them. “The big shots just showed up,” she said.

“That was quick,” I said. “Maybe I’ve been wrong about this organization all along.”

“There’s like a fleet of them. And they brought these guards, these big Black bucks. They got Willy sitting in the programming room with their hands on his shoulders keeping him down. I think he’s foaming at the mouth.”

“We should be filming him for an anti-drug PSA,” I said.

Her face turned red. “Look, I know Willy has been crazy lately. But deep down he’s a good man. He’s just…. look, I don’t want to tell anyone this, but you know how Willy thinks that you and I are having an affair?”

“He may have mentioned something in passing.”

“Willy has sort of been stalking me for a bit.”

“How much is a bit?”

“Like months.” Hazel shook her head. “You know how kind-hearted I am. Well, I made the mistake of trying to help Willy get over his wife. But he got the wrong idea. It started with emails after work. Then phone calls to my cell. Then he started showing up at my house after he knew Luigi left for work. Yesterday Willy told me that he loved me and I had to tell him to leave me alone. He came to work in a rage this morning.” Tears began to form in her eyes. “You know and I know Willy smokes marijuana. I don’t know if it’s making him paranoid or what. He sees me at work sitting with you at the reference desk, and he thinks you fixed the schedule to keep him away. He sees me going into your office and complaining…and he thinks we’re flirting. He thinks I’m going into your office and we’re fooling around.”

“I always knew the Reefer Madness people were right,” I said. I pointed between Hazel and I. “He honestly thinks this is going on?”

Hazel wiped away a tear. “I might’ve egged him on a bit,” she said. “Your poems I read them…the printed ones…and then I Googled you. I started telling Willy how much I loved your writing. How gritty and raw I thought it was. I…I didn’t do it to make him jealous…I think I did it to make him stop bothering me.” She began pacing around the office. “I told Willy that I felt like I had a connection to you. I used to write poems too. And songs. I wanted to be singer so badly. I played in some high school bands. People told me that I sounded like Grace Slick. But my father…my father, Rand. You don’t understand old Italian men in the 1970s. My old man saw me leaving for a gig in a black leather jacket and a mini-skirt. He pulled me away from the door by my elbow and started slapping me around, calling me…” Tears broke again. “Calling me all kinds of names. He said a woman didn’t belong on stage singing that shit. Was I some kinda whore? So, I quit. I met Luigi. The rest is history.”

“Jesus.”

“And Willy was mad about that,” she said. “Never mind I told him my old man used to beat me…it was all, well, why do you connect with Rand? I’m a musician why aren’t you connecting with me? And now…now it’s all of this.”

“So, it was you all along printing up those poems,” I said.

“Me?” Hazel scrunched up her face. “Typical male. I tell you a tragic story and all you care about is yourself. You and Willy deserve each other.”

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “But I’m running a touch low on empathy these days.”

“Well, Mr. Self-serving, it wasn’t me who printed your goddamned poems…it was Scott.”

“Scott?” Of all the shockers of the day, that was the Moby Dick of shockers. “Scott…Scott who works here…quiet as a mouse Scott who eats peppers whole and is willing to take on any assignment that I give him, work extra nights and take extra desks? That Scott?”

“Bone Daddy himself.” Hazel smirked. “I told ya’ he was a creep.” Well, I was floored. She walked over to me “Since you started having that little poem problem, I decided to start keeping track of the paper we use here, just in case the poems were being printed at the branch. And they were. We’ve been going through a ton of paper and let me tell you paper isn’t cheap, and I have to send these reports on tech use once a month, so I don’t want it to look like anyone here was abusing…”

“Is there a moral to this story, Hazel?”

“I came into work extra-early the other day,” she said. “And I caught him red-handed. I spied Scott at the printer with a big stack of paper in the tray, and just these spools of it coming out. I sensed something was up so I immediately go over to Scott and rip one of them papers right out of his hand. And it’s your poems. He was so scared and caught red-handed that it took nothing to get him to admit what he did. Then I tell Scott to stop printing the poems or else I was gonna go to you about it.” Hazel smiled. “I also got him to stop eating those damned peppers, and he’s on a five-minute timer for the bathroom.”

“Fuck.” I sat back and scratched my head. Willy was innocent, at least on that charge. So was Hazel. But I was still surrounded by lunatics and schemers on all sides, and apparently involved in a love triangle that I had no clue I was in.

“I told you Scott was a dirtbag.”

“Did he say why he was printing the poems? Why he was sending them to HR?”

Hazel shrugged. “I forgot to ask,” she said. “I just knew that I had to try and save Willy…despite everything. Rand, you have to admit you’re kind of wrong with skipping out on your responsibilities and then giving him crap. But he didn’t print those poems, like I know you thought he did…. because I know deep down you didn’t really think that it was me. I just thought telling you now maybe you could stop them from dragging Willy out of here and shipping him off to Siberia or whatever. And you’re the only one I told. Because deep down I know you’re a good man. I know you’ll always do the right thing. I-I promise you I can get Willy to calm down and be reasonable.”

I got up from Jill’s desk. I was tired of hiding away and it was time to face my accuser, make a case for myself, and unfortunately now try and save Willy from being deported to some branch across Brooklyn and maybe even straighten a lot of this shit out. I opened the office door and there were now about four or five big shots standing around in their polyester suits. The door to the meeting room opened, and out came Oleg and the other two security guards. In the middle of the pack was Willy, haggard looking, like some national fugitive brought to justice.

He was ranting and raving, foaming at the mouth and wagging his finger at each and every one of them. Lawsuits were being threatened. Conspiracies tossed at the walls to see if they’d stick. Jill stood by my office door with her arms folded, shaking her head at the whole ordeal with those fast-food bags still in her hands. Sheldon was nowhere to be found. Scott was still in the children’s room with his picture books. I glanced at him, and he looked like he was staring right through me. I always thought that it was a blank stare, but now I could see the menace. I could feel the abject hate. He mouthed words at me. Bone Daddy, I think. He was another problem for another time.

I started for the big shots. “Look, guys I…”

“It’s him!” Willy shouted across the library. Before I knew it there were dozens of faces looking my way. “He’s the one who’s guilty! Not me! I didn’t do anything! I’m innocent here! All I wanted to do was retire in peace! It’s him not me! Rand Wyndham is the liar! Rand Wyndham is the one who cheats the system! Who head-butts people! Who writes about drugs and sex! Who vomits in front of children and has affairs with co-workers! It’s Rand who skips his meetings and is a sexual predator! Just ask Lena Alvarez! It’s Rand! He’s the one writing poems about all of us. It’s him…the poet. It’s…” But they had Willy out the door before he could finish.

Fuck him, I thought. So long Ganja Joe. Of all of the problems that I had in this world, innocent or not, at least Willy Abelman was no longer mine. I looked back at Hazel and she was glaring at me. I shrugged. She stormed off and slammed the staff room door. Oh well. I decided to let the truth burry itself deep down in my soul. I wasn’t such a good man after all.

The Poet : Chapter 28

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

 

The sidewalk in front of the orange-faced billionaire’s skyscraper was blocked off with metal barricades. But there weren’t any protestors, just the good old boys in blue milling about as if a grand joke had been played on them. There were many tourists blockaded in on the other side of the street, wearing their red Make America Great Again hats and cheering on the cops. The orange-faced billionaire’s ugly building had become a bit of a new tourist destination here in Gotham since he’d announced his degenerate candidacy. There were a couple true supporters of the orange-faced billionaire pacing and shouting to the crowd; two gapped-toothed hillbillies. One had a sign that read: When they jumped the fence they Broke the Law. Obviously one of the next ambassadors to Latin America provided he could find any of the countries on the map.

            “Hey, genius,” I said to the other protestor. He was holding a banner telling the current president to go back to Africa. “Any chance you know the way to Bebelplatz? Been a while since I attended a good book burning.”

            He spun around confused. “Huh?”

“Where are all of the protestors, hombre?”

            “Can’t ya’ll hear ‘em?” he said. He pointed up toward Central Park. There were cop sirens and faint chanting. “Them fools started up ‘ere in the park and is workin’ they way right down here. If them po-lice don’t bust’em first.”

            “You know, the public library offers free classes to people for whom English is not their first language. I could probably email you a flier or something.”

            “I’m from Western New York,” he said. “I’m ‘mercian as you can git.”

            “All the same think about it, Jethro,” I said.

            They came like a rush. There had to be thousands of them. They were shouting and swearing and carrying signs against the orange-faced billionaire. Many had signs that showed his face made to look like a pile of carroty shit with his yellow comb-over as the top. That what he was…a lump of shit. SHitler. The cops wouldn’t let the people protesting congregate in front of the building so they turned down Fifty-Seventh Street. I left my new hillbilly friend and started walking fast down Fifty-Sixth and booked it up Madison Avenue to try and catch them. What in the fuck was I doing there? I just wanted to see Larissa, and according to her this protest was the only way in which that was happening. Two weeks and a new month to boot since we’d been together. That infamous overnight bag still sat on my table in its defiled state. But there was no way I’d find her in this mess. Perhaps everyone was right about me getting a cell phone.

When I got to the corner there was a flood of people and I felt lost. I looked for Larissa. It was near impossible, like she said it would be. The protest was full of young people and old hippies; the Cornelia Street reading all over again. Damned near everyone had dyed hair. There were so many people with dyed hair I thought I was at a fucking Anime convention. Orange-hued billionaires and Cosplay were all the rage that unseasonably warm, gray early March afternoon. Before I knew it, I got carried away into the crowd and was pumping my fist and calling the orange-faced billionaire so many names I had to start making up invective. Good Christ was it cathartic to spew venom. If you couldn’t beat them then join them instantly became my new mantra. Rand Wyndham: Man of the people once again. Take that Willy Abelman!

The cops marched after us, waiting to grab anyone trying to get into the street to block that famous Manhattan traffic. They were in full riot gear to beat on jaywalkers. Horns blared. Drivers shook their fists. Protesters shook their signs. Dump the bum. Black Lives Matter. Build a Wall around Him! We are all Muslim. You Mean Make America Hate Again. When people saw a limo pull up to the curb back at the corner of Fifty-Sixth, they booked it toward the thing, and started hovering around and shouting at the blackened windows. Good God what if orange face was actually in there? They’d tear him apart.

            “Rand!” I turned in the maelstrom of bodies. I couldn’t see anyone. I heard my name again. Then there was Larissa…with fucking Kale and Astra of all people. They were right by a corner of the orange-faced billionaire’s building, dressed in camouflage like green cadets.  It took a while to navigate through the crowd but I made it over to them. Larissa and I did not hug. We did not kiss.

            “Hey,” she said, somewhat coldly. It was as if I’d shit on her rally by actually showing up at her behest…or I think it was at her behest. You’ll do what you want is what I believe she said.

            “Oh my God,” Astra said to Kale. “Like that poet is here.” Then her face contorted and she shouted something vile out into the orange-face billionaire-sphere.

            “Hey,” was all that I could say back. I was rendered mute.

I looked into Larissa’s eyes for anything. She looked at me as if I were some stranger. But there was no time to think about any of that. Protestors swamped us. Before I knew it Larissa, Astra and Kale had their signs hoisted and we were marching down Fifty-Sixth Street shouting about ol’ orange-face again. Astra’s sign said, Hate Has No Place in AmeriKKA, spelled just like that, without that extra K needed for emphasis. Kale, for his part, hoisted up a sign that read, Vegans against Demagogues, with pictures of chickens and pigs and cows glued to the thing. Larissa’s said Burn the Patriarchy. I wondered if the bars were open yet. Social protest made me want to drink. Here’s to the examined life!

Suddenly we stopped moving. We were all just kind of stuck on Fifty-Sixth. Kale leaned forward and looked down the street. “Aw dag,” he said. “They barricaded us in.”

            “It means that we’re like trespassing,” Astra said to me.

            “Like trespassing or actually trespassing?” I said. “There’s a big difference Astro.”

            Larissa finally turned to me and sighed. “You can’t block a city sidewalk, Rand. People have to be able to get by. If they can’t they can start arresting us.”

            “For what? It’s our rights as Americans to protest or waste our lives watching reality TV.” I pumped my fist. “Fight the power and all that.”

            “You need like permits to formally protest,” Astra said.

            “Didn’t these hooligans like get them?” I said.

            “Um…nooooooo…why would they do that?”

            I looked at Larissa. She shrugged. “I didn’t know until we got here.”

            “I knew,” Kale said. He shook his banner. “But I didn’t care.” He looked at me. “Fuck the system. Right, poet man?”

            “Speak for yourself, Rhymin’ Simon,” I said. “I’ve got bills to pay.”

            “The system is like keeping us down,” Astra said. “Like it’s all rigged for the elite or something. That’s why the world is so screwed up and people are like dying in like India.”

            “Neoliberalism…and smartphones,” I said. “The bane of our existence.”

            “We like have to protest to stop this.”

            “We can’t let them win, man,” Kale said. His beard as blunt as his words.

            “You two obviously don’t have a landlord or the student loan people breathing down your neck,” I said.

            “But like some people actually do have to pay for things, old man,” Astra said.

            “Good Christ,” I said. “If the cops don’t do it, I might beat you two silly myself.”

            “Rand, leave them alone,” Larissa said.

            “If I get stuck in the same cell as Kale it’s open season on him.”

            They all went back to shouting and protesting. But fuck it. A duo of twentysomethings still tethered to their parent’s bank account didn’t care about breaking the law. What was going to happen to Kale if he spent a few hours being processed, other than thinking he now had street cred? Or Astra. Her old man would have bail sent via some pampered daughter APP, before the ink on her fingers was dry. Even Larissa, at her age, was still on the take from her parents. She’d live to yoga again. But me? How to explain to my library system that I’d been arrested? For social protest of all things? They wouldn’t believe me. I had a better chance of being bailed out of the drunk tank. Rand Wyndham with a social consciousness? Even I had to laugh at that.

“Also, poet man,” Astra said to me. “Like where’s your sign?” She shook her double K America at me.

            “Left it in the shitter over at that drugged-up Mickey D’s on Eighth Avenue,” I said.

            “After this we’re going down to Wall Street to protest the banks,” Kale added.

            “And for vegan black bean empanadas,” Astra said.

            “You lost me at black bean empanadas,” I said. “Had you said Kimchi tacos maybe…but I’m getting the fuck out of here.”

            “Hmmm,” was all Larissa said.

            I started crawling through the crowd toward Fifth Avenue. In front of the protestors stood a long, thick line of New York’s finest. They had their batons at the ready. They had police vans and automatic weapons ready to use against cellphone junky Millennials and old hippy dips who were holding hands and singing Blowin’ in the Wind? It was unreal watching all of the stone-faced governmental sycophants. They weren’t cops. They were former bullies with grudges made soldiers getting ready to fight a ground war against their own citizenry. Gone was Officer Friendly patrolling the neighborhood beat. Put in his place were proto-military units under the guise of law and order.

America…you fucking, fascist failure.

            I got to Fifth and sure enough it was barricaded. My good ol’ hillbilly friends, however, were free to roam the streets with their racist banners, one working my side of the street and one working the other. Tourists with long Southern drawls were taking pictures and clapping along to the glittering waves of fascism. They came to New York in droves year-round, those fat Southern and Midwestern close-minded, pasty-white, college football t-shirt wearing, 9/11-sobbing monsters. They took pictures in Times Square and spread garbage in Central Park. They rode carriage horses to untimely deaths and watched the Rockettes swing their long legs. They went to the World Trade Center and shed crocodile tears while buying NYPD baseball caps. But we Gothamites knew how they really felt about us. If New York City got nuked tomorrow, they’d roar and cheer and find somewhere else to spend a buck on shot glasses and t-shirts.

“See,” Hillbilly said when he saw me. I done tol’ you they was comin’.”

            “I knew I should’ve trusted a man from Western New York. I always forget what a percolating bastion of genius it is up there.”

            “You ever been?” he asked.

            “I’ve shuffaloed to Buffalo a few times.”

            Hillbilly spit. “Nothin’ but libtard scum in Buffalo.” Then he ran down Fifty-Sixth to taunt the caged-in protesters, under full police protection of course.

            An announcement came over one of the speakers atop a cop van: This is a message from the New York City Police Department. Trespassing is against the law. Anyone blocking a city street or sidewalk without a permit is subject to arrest. Protesters started booing and shouting at the message. My hillbilly shouted at the cops to arrest us all. Things were getting heated quickly. Someone tried to pull the sign away from my hillbilly pal but he ripped it back and laughed. He got behind the cops. I looked across Fifth Avenue and tourists were taking pictures of the madness just across the street. An hour later they’d be atop the Empire State building, their fat asses full from fast food chain hamburgers. I started snaking my way back toward Larissa and the wonder twins.

            “I think we should find some way to get the fuck out of dodge,” I said to Larissa.

            “I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

“I’m like so going to the Republican Convention to protest,” Astra said.

            “Don’t forget the Democrats too,” Kale added. “Corporatists in sheep’s clothing!”

            “They’re all swine!” Someone else shouted. Shit, we might’ve well have been at one of the orange-faced billionaire’s rallies for all of the angry populism going around.

            “Larissa I’m not kidding around here,” I said, as that NYPD announcement started again. I saw big bottles attached to the cop’s belts. Pepper spray. People were getting pepper sprayed all over the place at that orange goon’s rallies.

            “No one is stopping you from trying to leave,” she said. “In fact, why’d you come back?”

            “Yeah,” Astra said. “Like if you’re not a part of the problem then you’re part of the solution.”

            “I think MLK said that,” I said.

            “You bring me down, poet man,” Kale said.

            In the middle of Fifty-Sixth Street there was a crosswalk. People were leaving the protest and crossing there, and the cops weren’t doing shit to stop them. They weren’t barricading us all in like lambs to the slaughter. They sure as shit weren’t stopping those people. I started creeping toward the exit. But then my conscience got the better of me. I grabbed Larissa by the wrist and started pulling her along. She was reluctant at first but then she gave in. No one really wanted to get arrested or pepper sprayed. Except maybe Kale and Astra. Larissa pulled away from me and stopped the minute we were safely on the other side.

“I told you I wasn’t leaving,” she said. She rubbed her wrist to give me that extra twinge of brutal, male guilt. Larissa took a hit on that stupid e-smoke of hers.

“Then why’d you cross the street with me?”

“Because I think we need to talk.”

I was shaking. Yours truly was visibly afraid of the cops and those automatic weapons they carried. I was a touch scared of the protestors and salivating tourists too. I was becoming afraid of all Americans. “Let’s find a bar. I need a drink.”

            “What else is new?” Larissa looked at her watch. “It’s like two in the afternoon. Why not start crawling toward the inevitable blackout.”

            “I didn’t say I wanted to get drunk. I said I needed a drink. Something to relax with all of this madness.”

            “This isn’t madness,” she said, as that cop announcement started again. “This is people standing up for their country.”

            “Yeah and I hate this place from sea to shining sea. So…anyway why are you being so cold to me?”

“Why’d did you go digging through my shit?”

            “Who gave me up? Gigi? Christ, she won’t rest until I’m dead, will she?”

“I mean seriously what in the fuck were you doing in my overnight bag anyway?”

            “If I told you the truth, would you think me erotic and cute?”

            “Fuck no.” So, I stayed silent. Larissa took another drag on her e-smoke and then whipped out her phone as a distraction. “You really have nothing to say for yourself?”

            “One action doesn’t dictate an entire personality,” I said “Unless you’re Tricia Thread. What I did was a lapse in judgement. I sincerely felt guilty when I got home that night, Larissa. I missed you. I guess I wanted to feel close, so I went inside the bag to grab a pair of…”

            “Ugh, maybe I don’t want to hear this.” She checked her phone again and started typing away.

            “And I found the folder.”

            “Duh.”

            “In my defense why would you even bring that to my place?”

            “Because I thought I had a little something called privacy or personal autonomy.”

            It was then that someone in the crowd stepped out onto Fifth Avenue and the cops went nuts. At least a dozen of them took off after one person. The protestors booed and started moving toward the street. More cops left their formation. It became one big mass of blue and camouflage and banners. The two hillbillies danced around the madness and waved their signs. A subtle odor of pepper spray filled the air. We needed to go.  I went for Larissa again but she side-stepped me and started hurriedly down the street.  We got to Madison Avenue and made a right and hid in the wide-open front entrance of a skyscraper. Protestors and cops ran past us in blurs.

            “Look, I’m as curious about what you write as I am about everyone else,” I finally said. “I don’t often admit it, but good old Rand has a competitive streak in him.”

            Larissa looked away from her phone. “And a deceitful streak.”

“I don’t know what Gigi or Jackson or whoever filled your head with, but I looked at your stuff once and I was wrong to tell Carolina that I thought I was in love with her at Big Nick’s. For the record she doesn’t even want to see me.”

            “Neither of them told me about what you said to Carolina,” she said.

            “Well, who did?”

            “You just did asshole. I was only talking about my fucking short story that you stole.”

“Oh.” Christ, I really wished that I was in a bar. I did this kind of stuff much better in a bar. “Look, kid, you want to talk about deceitful? Never mind that I went into your bag. That story, Larissa. I mean what in the fucking blazes was that shit! How could you? No…why would you even do that to me…all things considered. You know how I’ve been tortured over that novel of Carolina’s. I mean tortured. Like thrown in the ovens burnt to a crisp.”

“Did you just compare yourself to a Holocaust victim?” She didn’t even look up from her phone. “By the way Kale and Astra didn’t get arrested. Not that you care.”

“They could wind up in Gitmo and the world would be a better place.”

            “Also, you’re a fucking hypocrite,” Larissa said. “You write all of those poems about people, about co-workers, about your friends, about people on the bus and subway. You have those ones that are about Carolina. Your one true love, right? Yet there she is in your poems like some big bar whore who wronged you.”

“Have I told you about Colin and the sink?” I said. “Although that might be a drunken delusion at this point. It was Jazzy Jim, right? Alcohol and I have a very O’Brien/Winston Smith relationship.”

“I know enough about that stupid, fake sink story that I could recite it back to you.”

“Or write it yourself.”

Larissa laughed bitterly. She still kept her head in that fucking phone, texting with fucking Kale or Astra, or culling up the spirit of Carolina. “And you have poems about me,” she finally said. She held up her phone to show me the evidence. “Poems about my tattoos; especially the ones that no one else can see. You have poems about my hair, my ass, and my tits. Why not write an ode to the thin hairs circling around my asshole for Christ’s sake, Rand!”

            “Well, excuse you for being a mammal.” That solicited an eye roll from Larissa. More cops and robbers came running past us. “Love poems. They’re all clearly love poems.”

            “The poem about accidentally putting a finger in my ass was a love poem?”

            “I took creative license,” I said. “That never happened. Any good and careful lover would never mistake the asshole for the vagina.”

            “You’re a liar on top of being a hypocrite.” She finally looked away from her phone. “Our friends have seen those poems. Every time you touch me, I feel those poems. Every time I’m at a reading with you I think people are looking at me when you read those poems. Every time I talk to Killian or Jackson…or Gee, I feel those poems between us. My sister has seen those poems. I called her when I found out you stole that story, and she asked me what in the fuck I was doing with a dirty old man like you, and honestly, I couldn’t answer her.”

            “Did you tell her about...?” But I had no answer. The world will tell you that writing is a solitary experience. But that extends only so far as the little room that you do it in.

            “And I write one story about you,” Larissa said. “One, Rand. And it wasn’t about you being drunk all the time. Or how much you love my dildo collection. Or you clogging up my toilet all of the time. Or you being worried about your man boobs, your one testicle, that weird rash that you have on your back, or even that you think your dick is too small. It was about a fucking wiffleball game. A story that you weren’t even supposed to see yet. And you get your panties in a knot? Bitch, please.”

            “Did you even consider my feelings when you sat down to write that story, or think maybe I wanted it?” I said.

            “Rand, you’re as thick as a milkshake sometimes,” Larissa said. “I didn’t consider your wants or needs then, and I don’t really care for them right now.” She looked at her phone. “Did you consider my feelings when you wrote the poem Making Satan’s Daughter Come Again?”

            “At least you don’t come off as a fat fool like I do in that story.”

            “It’s not you it’s a character, right? I’m not telling you something that you don’t know.”

            “I’m on YouTube for Christ’s sake!”

            “And whose fault is that?”

            I shook my head. “I was defending your honor and the honor of all women.”

            “Nobody wanted you to,” Larissa said. “You and your noble-white-male-finally-attacks-the-patriarchy act actually made shit worse for me and Millicent. Now those asshole kids make it a point to be outside when we come home.”

            “Would it help if I apologized?” I asked. “For everything.”

“I’m not in the absolution business.”

            “Then why did we even do this today?”

            “You wanted to talk,” she said into her phone. “I wanted to protest that vile, baby-dicked orange-faced billionaire…and get empanadas.”

            “I wanted to talk about us,” I said.

“Us as human beings?” Larissa said. “Us as an autonomous collective? What us?”

            Sure, now she learns how to banter. “Look, I can see you being all cold with me because of what I did. But let’s look at the bigger picture here.”

She put down her phone and looked at me like she didn’t care. “And that is?”

            It was the grasping at straws portion of the day. “Kid, admit that you were using me all along. Millicent explained as much. I know all about the poet boyfriend of yours. I know all about him taking off with someone else to go off and forge a brave new world. You meet me. I’m sort of drunk and silly. I’m safe. You think, oh, maybe this time it’ll work out with a guy like Rand. I mean you said so yourself that you don’t usually go for guys like me. So we date. You find out this boy has a touch of the old kink in him. But then the drinking got in the way, right? And me not wanting to go anywhere. And...”

            “Etcetera, etcetera, all the way to your invasion of my privacy,” Larissa said. “And Rand, you’re quite possibly ninety-nine percent incorrect. I thought you were amusing, yes. I don’t normally date squares like you, also yes. But it had nothing to do with me getting over someone. That’s such a stereotype. I don’t need to fill any hole, certainly not by someone like you. Honestly, I tried giving you hints that I was kind of done with you, but you never seemed to get them. And I guess it takes me a while to build up to confrontation, because I’ve been around the block with insecure men like you. So, I just stopped coming around.”

            “I just thought that absence made the heart grow fonder,” I said. “That you were somewhere bursting with fondness for me.”

Larissa shook her head and looked at me as if thoroughly done and disgusted. “You know I was just going to go ahead and ghost your ass,” she said, “but then Gigi told me how complicated that would be with someone like you. If he didn’t get a hint when he was younger, she said, he won’t get a hint now. And now I ha…” Suddenly her cell phone blared some god-awful screeching, wailing punk anthem. Larissa picked it up like we weren’t even having a relationship ending conversation. “Gotta take this.” Her mood instantly changed and she said a happy yo into the phone and then walked away for a second.         

Ghost me? What in the shit was that? I swear every time I got down with the lingo, people changed the game on me. I watched Larissa talk and pace. Well, I thought, this was almost done. Or it was done and really Larissa didn’t even need to tell me. In truth I wasn’t as thick as all that. I knew the deal. It’s just…I was a little bit sad. Larissa had been good company. We had no romantic chemistry. That was my fault mostly. I was long past the thrill of living and romantic chemistry was no longer my kind of science. That was fine with me. The cultural good ship lollipop was sailing and good ol’ Rand was stuck on the docks.

            “Kale got pepper sprayed,” Larissa said, when she got off her phone. I couldn’t help but laugh. Just the image of that bearded dipshit spinning around Midtown with his eyes burning while Astra walked circles around him going, like, like…wrong reaction to have I know. But nothing mattered.

            “They say to use milk,” I said. “For the eyes.”

            “Astra tried to get him some but the bodega she went to didn’t have organic almond milk.”

            “An American tragedy.”

            Larissa looked at me sadly. “Soooooooo, we done here or what?” she said. If she didn’t want ceremony then I didn’t want ceremony. “Because Kale is my friend and I want to go and see if he’s all right.”

            “Completely and totally done,” I said. I sounded a bit cold but I’d save the dramatics for when I was back at the apartment and had the vodka and old R&B music going, when I knew the tears would come, when the world would become completely overwhelming as it did to me at times. I’d save the real stuff for when it hit me, I was back at ground zero again with no one lying next to me, and no one around to give me that knowing glance or touch. “But one thing? What are we going to do about our friends? Do we have to, you know, divide them up?”

Larissa shrugged and smirked. “Do you really think that I’m so fragile that I can’t be in a room with you, dude?”

Perhaps I’d shed no tears tonight. “I…”

            “Or are you the fragile one?” Larissa craned her neck down Madison. “Go get yourself that drink, Rand,” she said. “Maybe I’ll see you at the reading.”

Then she was gone. Gone. Just like that. People in and out of your life. It had been a while for me and legitimate break-ups. I forgot how much endings stung. How hollow they left you. Larissa seemed fine. But poor me. How was I going to be in a room with her? See her with some other person? Someone who truly made her happy? Caught up in sex and poetry and all that bullshit for real this time? I started walking toward a bar that I knew on Third Avenue. It was almost three in the afternoon and there I was heading toward the abyss alone. I was alone a lot but I never really felt lonely, until moments like this, that is.