the other man is at least sometimes me, even though I am also the audience. In the climactic reel, the two men are climbing up through a narrow passageway toward the surface. Despite my knowing the story, having seen this movie before, this time through the reel it is snowing heavily in the cave, obscuring all view of what is going on. Stupid projectionist!
What must happen in the story, eventually, is that the cruel man betrays his companion and leaves him to die. It is never made clear why he does this; perhaps he is just a psychopath. I know that the cruel man, leading the ascent to the surface, pisses on the other man from above, which, in certain company and certain context, is considered an impolite thing to do—though not usually fatal. The climactic betrayal may actually entail the antagonist suffocating his companion with his penis, but my memory may be faulty. In either case, though, Brain came up with it, so. Murder by blow job.
The next movie is a 1970s drama about disaffected rich folk: hints of Tennessee Williams here. In this one I am the sullen, alcoholic daughter of a bitterly dissatisfied, alcoholic mother. I want to say she is played by Karen Black but that is probably wishful thinking.
What must happen in the story, eventually, is that the cruel man betrays his companion and leaves him to die. It is never made clear why he does this; perhaps he is just a psychopath. I know that the cruel man, leading the ascent to the surface, pisses on the other man from above, which, in certain company and certain context, is considered an impolite thing to do—though not usually fatal. The climactic betrayal may actually entail the antagonist suffocating his companion with his penis, but my memory may be faulty. In either case, though, Brain came up with it, so. Murder by blow job.
The next movie is a 1970s drama about disaffected rich folk: hints of Tennessee Williams here. In this one I am the sullen, alcoholic daughter of a bitterly dissatisfied, alcoholic mother. I want to say she is played by Karen Black but that is probably wishful thinking.
In any case, Mother and I have a major cinematic fight—no recollection what it's about, but that hardly matters; the point is pathological unhappiness eating itself. Our fight ends with me unloading a devastatingly harsh zinger and storming out. Or rather, trying to storm out: it seems our mansion in this movie is a ridiculously dream-pomo split-level affair. There are broad-rising, white-carpeted "stairs" between any given pair of rooms. I stumble on these risers as I make my exit, which ruins an otherwise perfectly good flounce.
Shortly thereafter, Mother decides to commit suicide. I decide to let her. She has OD'ed on something—doubtless an elixir from amidst her vast array of designer mood scripts—or has otherwise laid herself out [I want to say on a day bed but she's really kinda sprawled on an awning of some kind—indoor-outdoor are mixed up here].
Shortly thereafter, Mother decides to commit suicide. I decide to let her. She has OD'ed on something—doubtless an elixir from amidst her vast array of designer mood scripts—or has otherwise laid herself out [I want to say on a day bed but she's really kinda sprawled on an awning of some kind—indoor-outdoor are mixed up here].
I discover her, still alive but not long for this world. I have just begun to slip away discreetly, never to hear from her again when I hear a maintenance man nearby, one of the familiar grounds crew; and sure enough he spies Mother and yells for me to stop and come back. I worry here that he had observed me observing Mother in her distressed state—that he knows I fully intended to passively assist her suicide. But I don't worry about it that much; he is, after all, the help and so can be dealt with.
Segue is very vague and we may be in a completely different movie, but in the next scene I am cleaning up improbable objects. It is evening and the store [a sort of old-fashioned, log-framed general store] is about to close; I worry that I am taking too long and the old woman in charge will be angry. She is ill-tempered in general, but tonight she does not give me grief as I go about my indecipherable cleanup business. I am carrying cylindrical canisters of some sort, perhaps once containing oxygen; now they are empty and must be recycled. I should know but cannot remember where the recycling is. I head out a back door to a kind of loading dock or maintenance area, and indeed there are bins here for refuse and recycling.
Segue is very vague and we may be in a completely different movie, but in the next scene I am cleaning up improbable objects. It is evening and the store [a sort of old-fashioned, log-framed general store] is about to close; I worry that I am taking too long and the old woman in charge will be angry. She is ill-tempered in general, but tonight she does not give me grief as I go about my indecipherable cleanup business. I am carrying cylindrical canisters of some sort, perhaps once containing oxygen; now they are empty and must be recycled. I should know but cannot remember where the recycling is. I head out a back door to a kind of loading dock or maintenance area, and indeed there are bins here for refuse and recycling.
There are also a few exterior doors, at one of which two other humans, probably store employees, are carrying a heavy load outside. They need to run out and come right back in once they've deposited their whatever-it-is; but they cannot figure out how to unlock the door or prop it open, so I offer to stand there momentarily and let them back in.
Another of the exterior doors is a garage-door-size portal: it is open now and bright light and bustling sound come through. I walk over to see what is going on out there and I see a vast warehouse-type space (indoor-outdoor are mixed up here) that has been portioned off with ropes and canvases like a flea market; only the main purpose of the individualized spaces here appears to be social, not commercial: families and friend groups are set up and, it seems, tailgating. I am not sure there is a particular occasion being celebrated—probably this is a typical Friday night.
The whole concept of partitioning spaces off like this gives the OCD and/or autism spectrum aspect of Brain a hard-on. I want to rent a huge space and make a huge blanket fort, with tunnels and secret entrances. Also, part of me wants to get in a tarped-off space and have ironic, barren, species-disdainful sex, with oblivious humans partying on all sides, just a few feet away.
I wander some more. It now appears to be several hours earlier than it was a while ago: the sun is lowering but still offers plenty of light. The west lawn adjacent to the store (First Baptist Church, Egg Harbor City, N.J./Merritt Square Mall, Cocoa, Fla./Colonial Williamsburg Governors Palace kitchen gardens) currently hosts an enormous vehicle of some sort: it is basically a carnival big-top on wheels, with mesh or otherwise transparent walls. There are groups of people partying inside, so similar to the warehouse space I just examined that I have to check whether it's not the same space; whether a trick of perspective has fooled me into thinking this space is different. But no, the geometry of my recent footsteps convinces me this is a different party after all. And I see now it is a decidedly smaller space. This party is bound in its own weird and glorious vehicle for a folkfest of some kind.
It is a new movie. I am out with Fomo and two other friends; perhaps we are wassailing. We visit a house that is at least partly 94 Wilbur Street in Newark, but none of us live here. The residents here are all women, and we are having a fun time visiting; spirits are bright and we are all joking and laughing—until a particularly vindictive resident shows up. She clearly despises us, every one, and she turns her attention on each of us sequentially, running through each's litanies of sins, all of which appear to be based in sexism, toxic masculinity, and sexual microviolence. I parry her verbal attack with what I think is a decent comeback (now lost), but obviously none of us are to be permitted any further cordiality in this house, so let's go let's go to Benares.
We head down the stairs; Dorothy and Dan are on the lower landing; they have heard the preceding vituperation and offer a modicum of sympathy. Full-voice I address the assemblage at large: "It's so great visiting a house where people I love live with people who hate me." Somebody, possibly Dodo, asks "Why do they hate you, though?" and the implication is they have every right to. The implication is that I am a rapist, and of course I worry that I might actually be.
A buzzed-cut platinum blond punk rock chick comes up the stairs giving me so much similar shit as her housemate had, moments ago. Fuck this fucking shit. I tell her she is an asshole and shove her, lightly, at the top of her chest: it is minimal violence but it is still violence; and it's wholly non-sexual yet I still fear it promotes the general sexual accusation. Since rape has nothing to do with sex anyway.
I leave the house alone, heading down several long flights of wood plank stairs. The later ones are in crazy disrepair: most of them are turned completely at right angles so I have to step gingerly on each with the balls of my feet. Brain often sets these Wacky-Shack obstacle courses for me to run, and I run them joyfully.
Onto the street. It is night now.
For some reason, Maury Levy from The Wire is driving me around to look at real estate. At one point I recognize a house on a hill on the corner and think that we and the house are all in Wharton Park. "No," Maury says, "But you already made that connection, just a little while ago, and you sang a rhapsody and hailed a storm about it." I vaguely remember. In any case, this is not my beautiful house.
Maury lets me out and I have to go get my own car. These are city streets now and I am retracing my path to the historic guardhouse/one room schoolhouse-looking structure where Renee Hayes used to work. I know I left my car, legally parked, in front of this building. As I'm approaching my car, however, I see someone is getting into it and preparing to drive it away: this is Sharon Church from Chisanbop. I wonder what the hell she is doing. But as I head around the car to confront her at the driver door, I see now she is merely driving a transparent plastic conveyance that might have contained my car at some point, but not now. At present I can see my car (which is now a little kid's big wheel-looking toy) through her transparent buslike vehicle. It is Sunday night, so I ask her whether she is starting a route now or just taking it for a school bus route in the morning.
Lastly and most alarmingly, I am in the D.C. Metrorail system with a lot of strangers. We have all gotten off trains but are being held on the platform for unclear reasons. No one is giving us any information; indeed, no Metro employees or authorities are visible, nor have they been for a disturbingly long time. We are being held in the station with locked steel grates. At length I decide to raise a ruckus: I stand at the grate and holler "HEY!" as loud as I can. After a few iterations this gets somebody's attention, because someone hollers back, "Keep it down!"
I decide I need to keep hollering "HEY!" until someone actually shows up. And if they show up and refuse to let us out I will keep hollering "HEY!" in their face until they do. This actually seems like a fine idea! Why didn't 900,000 Jews at Treblinka think of it?
Unfortunately I'm really only hollering "HEY!" at Paul.
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