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