The Poet : Chapter 26

 

TWENTY-SIX

 

 

“Isn’t this place just like fantastic,” the woman at our table said.

Her name was Astra and she looked about ninety pounds soak’n’wet with her blonde, blunt haircut and bangs. She had on this annoying-ass white t-shirt that just had the word love written across it in black. I felt no love. I felt contempt. It was a Wednesday evening in February and I could’ve been alone with Larissa, but I got hauled into the East Village for something called a couple’s night. And, no, the place wasn’t fantastic. It was this rustic, pseudo-Moroccan/Egyptian hybrid themed, stone and hieroglyphic motif that bothered any and all sensibilities and probably offended about twelve different cultures and sub-cultures. The restaurant smelt vegetal. It was a good thing I’d stopped off for a pint of vodka and a slice of Joe’s pizza before this. I should’ve stocked up on beef jerky as well.

“Allister said they have the best Dragon Bowls,” the man next to me said. His name was Kale; just like the shitty vegetable they had in almost every dish here. He had Malcom X glasses and ginger hair parted to the side and shaved up in what I’d heard hipster jackoffs refer to as an undercut. That fucking beard, though. The hairy abomination went in a straight line down to the man’s breast plate and then was just cut bluntly.

“I don’t know who in the fuck Allister is,” I said. Larissa softly put her hand on my arm.

“He comes into Needful Things from time to time,” Killian said.

“Oh, we have so much in common then,” I said.

“Except he buys things and doesn’t loiter,” Gigi said.

“And you’re not half the man he is,” Millicent added. She had a firm grip on Killian’s hand.

“I’m so glad you two kids found each other.”

I reached for my glass of wine. It was blueberry wine. With real blueberries in it. It wasn’t hard to fuck up alcohol where I was concerned, but the fine people at Majestica’s Kitchen had given it their best shot. Astra had ordered the blueberry wine because she was feeling blue. Not blue sad blue, but blue color blue, as she noted. She even had her cell phone dressed in a blue sleeve. Astra had color days. But didn’t everybody?  I know I lived in perpetual gray. Watching her speak, it was easy to see why we were in the political predicament we were in. At least it wasn’t Pumpkin ale or an I.P.A.

“So, what do you like do again?” Astra asked me, although she was mostly talking to her cell phone. “For like a living?”

“I’m a drunkard,” I said.

“Cool.”

“Rand is a public librarian,” Larissa said. The touch on my arm had tightened severely. She had a good grip. All the yoga, I was sure. And all the typing now. Larissa had caught the writing bug and we hadn’t really seen each other in two weeks. All that time apart for strengthening and conditioning. Hey, at least I had bribed her into sleeping over once the torture of couple’s night came to an end.

“Drunkard is his second job,” Gigi said, into her cell phone too.

“I know like so many librarians,” Astra said. “It’s like the thing to be right now.”

“Then I’m going back to the warehouses and retail outlets,” I said.

“I’ve read some of your writing online,” Kale said. “You got some real anti-American shit going. I feel like your stuff is too dark-dark, you know? Like counterproductive to the movement.” He made a look like he was really thinking about my writing in the same way I was considering smacking him with my blueberry wine glass, or contacting the cops to arrest his barber. “All the same I don’t know. I guess I just like poetry that’s more traditional. So many of you guys are out there doing the tough guy Bukowski thing now. I mean WTF? The bro-et act gets old. I’m not saying your poetry’s old it’s just…”

“Sexist, misogynist…with just a touch of xenophobia?” Gigi said.

“Patriarchal crap,” Millicent said.

“Now, now, dear,” Killian added.

“You know how Kale is really into rhyming poetry,” Larissa said. “It’s like this new thing. Or an old thing. Or…”

“Wyndham is into slurring poetry,” Jackson said. Gigi slapped him five.

“I was wondering when you’d chime in, Reggie,” I said.

“Picking my moments.”

“Kale is like nouveau retro,” Astra said. “Or like retro nouveau.”

“I feel like I can’t sell a book,” he said.

“Someone published a book of yours?” I said.

“Three of them.”

“This bearded assclown has three books,” I said to Larissa. “And I can’t even get Fidel Pinochet to print mine properly.”

“Rand,” she said, as a warning.

 “All the same,” Kale finally said,” when is your book coming out?”

“Manana,” everyone said.

“You must be like so excited then,” Astra said. “Because manana is like tomorrow.”

“I’m literally shitting my pants right now,” I said.

The table got quiet. Larissa, Kale, Jackson and Gigi found solace in their phones. Astra studied the grooves in the table before she remembered her phone too. Killian and Millicent made cutesy, whispering talk. Fucking couple’s night. That said, I longed for the lull in conversation. Talking about poetry was bad enough but talking about it with some bob-bearded throwback to the Alexander Pope days was as bad as it could get. And what did Kale mean I was too dark? What did I write about that wasn’t common to the average knuckle-dragging beast walking down Main Street U.S.A.? What did Kale have? Couplets? Odes? A few sonnets dedicated to the way Astra stared blankly at the ceiling while he tried to make her come?

Astra pulled her head out of her phone. “This place is like really so fantastic,” she said again. I wasn’t sure if she remembered saying it the first time or not, or was just restating. “Rissa, you rock for finding this place.”

I looked at Larissa. “Wait, you set this night up?”

“It’s Astra and Kale,” she said, by way of an explanation. Everyone nodded in agreement.

“No offense,” I said. “But I hardly get to see you myself.”

“Don’t start this again, Rand.” Larissa glanced at her phone. “We chat like daily.”
            “On Gmail,” I said. “At work.” Christ I was beginning to sound desperate.

“You have a computer at home.”
            “Which I’m not of liberty to sit in front of all night.”

“You could join the human race and get a phone,” Gigi said.

“Human race?” That was a good one. “You call the lot of you and everyone else in this joint playing with their phones, like fucking zombies, as being a part of the human race?”

“I wasn’t playing with a phone,” Killian said.

Kale looked up from his phone. “Dude, my phone plan is so dope you don’t even know.”

“Did you say dope?” I said. “Did he just say dope?”

“White boy said dope,” Jackson said.

“And what do you want me to do, Rand?” Larissa asked. “I need time to work. I work at night because it best suits me.”

“He wants you to be a slave,” Millicent said. “Rudy wants you to forget your art because you’re a woman and art made by women isn’t as important as some drivel written by the white man. Plus, I like that you’re home to make that vegan chili that I so often crave.”

“Bro-ets,” Kale said.

“What’s so bad about writing in the morning at my place?” I asked.

“It wasn’t mine,” Larissa said.

“What does that even mean?”

“Your place, your schedule.”

“If you remember I’m the one who suggested we move in together,” I said.

Larissa bulked at that. “Can we not do this in front of everyone?”

“Like they’re even paying attention.”

“I heard every word you said, Wyndham,” Jackson said.

“The patriarchy is so passé,” Kale said. He checked his phone and held it up with a picture of one of my poems. “Plus, who writes a poem called Up Your Shit-clogged Ass America.”

“The privileged white male,” Millicent said.

“And if you guys are like really moving in together, I just want you to know that real estate is like hard,” Astra added. “My dad is like on my ass to find something like not in Williamsburg because he’s tired of paying the rent up there. But I’m like where else can I go? Like fucking racist-ass Bay Ridge?”

“I live in Bay Ridge,” I said.

Millicent waved her hand at me “Rudy, the grand dragon of Bay Ridge.”

“We can’t leave Williamsburg,” Kale said, in all seriousness.

“Of course not,” I said. “All of cultural Brooklyn would implode if you did.”

“Rand,” Larissa said. Second warning. She looked at her two friends. “He jokes around a lot.”

“AKA says dumb shit,” Gigi added.

Astra blinked absentmindedly. “I so love this place,” she said. She killed off Kale’s barbecue tempeh rib appetizer that he was too full to finish. A global hunger crisis had been averted.

“I need to vape before the main course comes,” Kale said. He stood and pulled this big metal device out of his tight pocket. It looked like a goddamned deconstructed microscope. How’d it even fit in there? “Astra?”

“Totally,” she said into her phone. “You coming Rissa?”

“In a minute,” Larissa said, sadly.

“I think we’re going to all go and get some air too,” Killian said. He and Millicent stood. I saw him give Jackson and Gigi the eye, and they got up as well.

“Don’t stick around on my account,” I said to Larissa, after the couple’s night crew left. Astra and Kale’s exit had started a mass exodus of people who also needed to vape. Somewhere out on St. Mark’s Place the ghosts of Patti Smith and Mapplethorpe mixed with the scented vapes and the smartphones and smartwatches, the fitbits and whatever other wearable tech these idiots had deemed important to make them feel complete. “I’m plenty entertained here.”

“Could you be nicer to our friends,” Larissa said.

“Our friends? I’ll give you Killian as being mutually endeared. But Jackson and Gigi live to insult me and Millicent hates me guts and can’t even get my name right. As for Astra and Kale…I never met those creeps.”

“I’ve introduced you to them like three times.”

“When?”

“Readings, Rand. Parties, Rand.” It struck me in that moment that Astra and Kale, and maybe even the absent Allister, had simply been a part of that faceless pack of Larissa’s friends I referred to as assorted hipsters. She had some blueberry wine. I stared at her. Did I even have a clue who she was? “Especially be nice to Kale. Last week he had to change therapists and it’s been really hard for him.”

“Why is a guy like that even in therapy? Because of his haircut? No offense but that’s self-inflicted. I’m willing to bet the chances are that good old Kale probably grew up a hell of a lot more well-adjusted than me.”

“He says his parents are ineffectual,” Larissa said.

“Except when it comes time to write the rent check and pay for a new Moleskin notebook, huh?” I said.

“You’re being mean and judgmental.” Larissa had more wine. “And Kale wouldn’t even think of writing on something as barbaric as paper.”

“How are some of these people even your friends anyway?” I asked. “What about either of them said to you, gee, as a thirty-year-old woman I’d like to spend quality time with Kale and Astra? They’re maybe what? Twenty-two? Like Gigi…what is she? Twenty-three? I’m just saying.”

“Maybe if I were trying to fuck all of them, you’d be more receptive to their ages,” she said. “And, again, I’m thirty-eight.”

Killian and crew came back inside not a moment too soon. Astra and Kale reeked of some kind of perfumed tobacco. I was impressed with how they navigated the room, considering they never looked up from their phones. Millennials must be the first human beings with SONAR. Or they just didn’t give a fuck. Dinner arrived as unrecognizable as I imagined it would look. Yet everyone dug in like we were at a backyard barbecue feast.

“What do you think about Godfrey Whitt?” Kale finally said to me. His beard was full of bits of his food.

“I’d strangle him in his bed if I could,” I said, pushing around my yellow lentil mush and daydreaming another slice of Joe’s pizza. “And honestly, I’m trying to eat here. Any talk of Whitt just turns the stomach.”

But Kale doubled down. He leaned in. I’d stoked a passion in him. “Godfrey Whitt is the voice of his generation. RevolutionaryWarVille is like my personal bible. It’s the reason I decided to become a writer instead of just being a barista and being in bands. And I could write like a thousand-page ode to The Fourteenth of June. Forget Foster Wallace. In the Seconds before Impact blows Infinite Jest away. Whitt is everything in literature now. Our living legend. His work could replace Moby Dick, my favorite novel by the way, as the great American classic. The very fact that I’ll be standing in the same room with him let alone sharing a stage at some point in the evening.” Kale stopped speaking. He was getting all teary-eyed. “He makes me want to be the writer of my own generation, only I can’t figure out how.”

“Try taking your fucking head out of your fucking phone for five fucking minutes,” I said.

Kale turned to Killian. “Honestly I don’t even know how Needful Things managed to get the man.”

“A magician never reveals his secrets,” Killian said.

“And Rand used to date Whitt’s girlfriend,” Larissa said. “They have some kind of murder/suicide pact when they aren’t flirting by way of antagonism.”

“Now, now,” I said. “Let’s not trash your new bestie.”

Jackson looked around. “Anyone else getting an Edward Albee vibe this evening?”

“Is this girlfriend of Whitt’s a writer?” Kale asked. “Cause her association with him alone makes me want to read all her stuff. What’s her full name? I want to look her up.”

“Carolina DeWitt,” Larissa said, dully.

“Whitt and DeWitt.” Kale began thumbing at his device. “Like a powerful law firm.”

“Speaking of power,” I said to Kale. “One more thing about Godfrey Whitt that might surprise you; he makes everyone call him God.”

“And he hits on other people’s girlfriends,” Jackson added.

Gigi took her head out of her phone. “He sent me one email.”

“Three emails.”

“Two of them were memes.”

“For Valentine’s Day.”

“See,” I said to Larissa. “You and I aren’t the only people having a shitty night.”

“At least Jackson is sober,” she said. “I don’t recall seeing bottom shelf vodka on the menu here.”

“This is nothing but male posturing,” Millicent said. “One the one hand you have Randy being the typical white male who always has something boastful or sarcastic to say because he can’t deal with his feelings, with an ineffectual father or government and culture designed for his very whimsy…and then you have Jackson, a simple yet strong Black man, the cyclical victim in the crosshairs of toxic masculinity and white supremacy.”

“Toxic what?” Jackson said.

Kale raised his eyes from his phone. “I’m not surprised he goes by that nickname though,” he said. “It seems fitting, calling a man of esteemed genius, like Whitt, God.”

We all got quiet after that. So much for couple’s nights in the future.

“You know,” Astra finally said. She put her fork down and looked at all of us. On her plate was something I could only describe as orange-mush. They said it was curry. I’d seen a lot of curries in my day. One really had to wrap their imagination around this dish to call it curry. “This place is like fucking fantas...no, it’s totally fucking awesome.”

I ended up going home alone that night. Larissa claimed to have a Rand-sized headache. Her overnight bag was on my table like a symbol of my failure to act like a decent human being. Black and leathery with some skull and crossbones on it; it looked like it didn’t belong there. Oh, how I could screw up. I missed Larissa in the moment. I always missed people at the wrong time. Maybe miss wasn’t the right word. I was drunk and hungry for her. The sheer power of the need made my stomach ache.

I opened Larissa’s overnight bag looking for a pair of undies she wouldn’t miss. I figured maybe I’d give myself a little bit of self-pleasure in front of the old PC, provided I could get it up. I started looking for those black, lace thongs that I liked. Instead, I found this manila folder, jammed with paper that she had tucked in the bottom of the bag. Larissa? With such a sin against humanity as paper in her possession, curiosity got the best of me.  I sat on one of my rickety chairs and gave the bundle a gander. Our girl had written a short story. A couple paragraphs in and I was hooked. I was startled by what she’d written. Man, I was shaken. But not in a good way.