I am bequeathed what I gather is partial ownership of the Long House—not the shabby, shady one Daniel B—é lives in on the edge of civilization; rather the well-lived-in multi-tenant property in town. As always, the house is three rooms wide across the front and all the way back. As always, it is two storeys tall and inside the front door, past the entryway, is a broad, slow staircase leading up to a sort of ballroom on the second storey, which is as wide as the house; three doors against the back of the ballroom lead into three separate rooms, and so on, all the way back; there are no hallways. As always, it's not clear how far back it goes; in fact, at one point I say to someone else who lives there, "I have a tendency to imagine this house just goes on and on without ever coming to the back, but I know that's not true."
As always, I love this house. But I notice for the first time what sad shape it's in—at least aspects of it. There are water stains and cracks in its front face, between the roof and the second-storey windows. Some of the interior walls have cracks, and some floorboard are loose.
As always, there are sneaky back stairs, curvy Dr. Seuss servant stairs leading from one apartment to another. I take one such stair from the ground floor to the first storey and wend my way through someone else's apartment. Seeing as how I have been left partial ownership of this house, I wonder whether or how many residents still live here. Some rooms are completely bare but others are full of the stuff of somebody else's daily life. Eventually some of the owners of these things show up. They are all women. I am put out because I wanted a houseful of hot gay men who own no clothes.
Eventually I leave the Long House and go visiting. After some forgotten partyish encounters at a friend's country villa—I think it may be Rob & Joe's place, but with significant modifications, e.g., a sliding back door on ground level—J.D. shows up as a hobo: in rags, grimy, just off the train apparently but still absolutely J.D.—razor-sharp, perceptive, deferential but quietly opinionated. He is wearing a funny hat. I lead him down the hill into the yard where an oil-drum fire still burns from earlier festivities. None of the other houseguests are still around. J.D. finds some discarded meat and reclaims it. There is no other context to this story.
FUG YOU
A scene unfolds on the deck of a ship. Apparently pirates have taken over and they are exceedingly unpleasant characters. They are currently molesting a young woman whose hands are lashed to a mast, above her head—except when she needs to move around, in which case not. The head pirate in charge of intimidation is hollering at her, all sorts of cliché script business about how she will beg for death if she doesn't tell them [where the treasure is, or whatever the fuck]. She is not so easily broken, however, and withstands a good deal of operatic or silent-film slapping with aplomb, or possibly with sang-froid.
The pirates go away by means unknown and the deck of the ship is now a deck on top of a tall, rude wooden structure, maybe 40 feet off the ground. A dozen or a score strangers and I are prisoners up here, presumably of the pirates. Looking down over the railing is also the tiniest bit like looking over the back of the bleachers at a ball game. There are a few humans below going about whatever business. I'm not sure what any of them are actually doing there vis-à-vis pirate and prisoner—collaborators? passer-by?—but one of them is engaged in the business of hectoring the lot of us up above. She is a young and enormously attractive woman of indeterminate but gorgeous color. ("Historians agree so it's not lewd in us to say that she's phenomenally pulchritudinous.") Think Sonya Braga circa Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985).
Anyway, Sonya's swearing like a sailor who swears a lot. She's unleashing such torrents of abuse and threats against the lot of us up on our deck that she's effectively pissing everyone off, driving us to despair. She knows what buttons to push, and at length, some of us start hollering back abuse and threats. Then one of our number, another young woman, jumps off the deck and goes splat on the muddy ground. She does not move. Everyone is silent for a long moment. It's the first death in our little drama and people are truly taken aback: it's all fun and games until...
It is now clear that this is exactly what the voluptuous young woman on the ground intends: to verbally berate us into committing suicide. Sure enough, another woman soon sits on the railing and sort of nudges herself off; the plummets straight down without changing position so that she lands on her feet and her ass. A horrible sound accompanies this landing, causing another silence among the crowd.
Much as I'd love to stay and relate more gruesome suicides—I know from the movies each one will be worse than the last—it turns out I have a doctor's appointment. My doctor is almost but not quite Gena Rowlands circa Playing by Heart (1998). She is treating me for some sort of ailment of the throat. I can still speak, but she assures me that three out of four thingummies in my throat are completely paralyzed. The good news is, treatment is easy and effective. If I will just follow her to the operating room...
FUG YOU
A scene unfolds on the deck of a ship. Apparently pirates have taken over and they are exceedingly unpleasant characters. They are currently molesting a young woman whose hands are lashed to a mast, above her head—except when she needs to move around, in which case not. The head pirate in charge of intimidation is hollering at her, all sorts of cliché script business about how she will beg for death if she doesn't tell them [where the treasure is, or whatever the fuck]. She is not so easily broken, however, and withstands a good deal of operatic or silent-film slapping with aplomb, or possibly with sang-froid.
The pirates go away by means unknown and the deck of the ship is now a deck on top of a tall, rude wooden structure, maybe 40 feet off the ground. A dozen or a score strangers and I are prisoners up here, presumably of the pirates. Looking down over the railing is also the tiniest bit like looking over the back of the bleachers at a ball game. There are a few humans below going about whatever business. I'm not sure what any of them are actually doing there vis-à-vis pirate and prisoner—collaborators? passer-by?—but one of them is engaged in the business of hectoring the lot of us up above. She is a young and enormously attractive woman of indeterminate but gorgeous color. ("Historians agree so it's not lewd in us to say that she's phenomenally pulchritudinous.") Think Sonya Braga circa Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985).
Anyway, Sonya's swearing like a sailor who swears a lot. She's unleashing such torrents of abuse and threats against the lot of us up on our deck that she's effectively pissing everyone off, driving us to despair. She knows what buttons to push, and at length, some of us start hollering back abuse and threats. Then one of our number, another young woman, jumps off the deck and goes splat on the muddy ground. She does not move. Everyone is silent for a long moment. It's the first death in our little drama and people are truly taken aback: it's all fun and games until...
It is now clear that this is exactly what the voluptuous young woman on the ground intends: to verbally berate us into committing suicide. Sure enough, another woman soon sits on the railing and sort of nudges herself off; the plummets straight down without changing position so that she lands on her feet and her ass. A horrible sound accompanies this landing, causing another silence among the crowd.
Much as I'd love to stay and relate more gruesome suicides—I know from the movies each one will be worse than the last—it turns out I have a doctor's appointment. My doctor is almost but not quite Gena Rowlands circa Playing by Heart (1998). She is treating me for some sort of ailment of the throat. I can still speak, but she assures me that three out of four thingummies in my throat are completely paralyzed. The good news is, treatment is easy and effective. If I will just follow her to the operating room...
Which I do. For a long, long time. She's striding briskly along corridors, turning here and there, taking flights of stairs (always down) and leading me through a veritable maze. Furthermore she seems to be speeding up, especially going down stairs—she's remarkably spry for a woman seemingly in her 60s! I wonder if she is purposely trying to lose me, or just showing off. Fortunately I am unnaturally spry too, and I follow close behind her, nearly flying down the stairs, taking 6, 8 steps at a time, finally bounding whole flights, doing airborne turns with only my left hand on the corner posts.
Which is clearly the point of this medical episode, since we never actually get to the "operating room" for her to fix my throat. Instead I am in a sort of group therapy session where people are opening up about their feelings. Everyone is in the spirit of the thing, including the attractive young woman from two scenes back who so effective lobbed taunts and vituperation at us captives. Now, however, she is soft-spoken and pleasant, though she did apparently carry from our previous pirate encounter a vivid scrape on the side of her nose. We are talking in such vague terms we could be talking about anything: "There must be one," says a young man, who may be the group leader. "That cannot be avoided. There must be one"; to which not-quite-Sonya Braga replies, "Yes, there must be one, but it cannot be that one."
It occurs to me: we will never be cured at this rate.
CODETTA
I visit Vidéo Américain in Newark, Delaware. The store is in the mini-mall, across from Days of Knights. The check-out counter is in a new place and looks like the front desk in the most run-down Somerset Maugham-scripted hotel in the tropics. I recognize the clerk on duty but he doesn't seem to know me. I remind him that I used to work here, which doesn't help. All the videos on the shelf are somehow linked with individual bones. They are meant to be human bones but are reproductions thereof. There is no obvious bone type = genre code going on; in fact it's not at all clear the associations aren't just random. Which might as well be a dream's thesis statement.
Which is clearly the point of this medical episode, since we never actually get to the "operating room" for her to fix my throat. Instead I am in a sort of group therapy session where people are opening up about their feelings. Everyone is in the spirit of the thing, including the attractive young woman from two scenes back who so effective lobbed taunts and vituperation at us captives. Now, however, she is soft-spoken and pleasant, though she did apparently carry from our previous pirate encounter a vivid scrape on the side of her nose. We are talking in such vague terms we could be talking about anything: "There must be one," says a young man, who may be the group leader. "That cannot be avoided. There must be one"; to which not-quite-Sonya Braga replies, "Yes, there must be one, but it cannot be that one."
It occurs to me: we will never be cured at this rate.
CODETTA
I visit Vidéo Américain in Newark, Delaware. The store is in the mini-mall, across from Days of Knights. The check-out counter is in a new place and looks like the front desk in the most run-down Somerset Maugham-scripted hotel in the tropics. I recognize the clerk on duty but he doesn't seem to know me. I remind him that I used to work here, which doesn't help. All the videos on the shelf are somehow linked with individual bones. They are meant to be human bones but are reproductions thereof. There is no obvious bone type = genre code going on; in fact it's not at all clear the associations aren't just random. Which might as well be a dream's thesis statement.
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