I Do This I Do That- Chapter 1

I. Shame Shaker


I'd like to say that waking up on a boat in the middle of an unknown harbor was the day that I decided to quit drinking, but it wasn't. Aside from being a bit seasick, nothing adverse happened on the boat. I considered the situation to be a funny coincidence rather than a consequence of my precarious hedonism. I had nothing in my life to deter me from being free in an almost dizzying manner. The feeling of waking in an addled sense of mind was nothing new to me. The circumstances changed, but the taste of dirt in my mouth and clouds in my brain were as routine as my morning coffee.

The boat was a brilliant shock. Granite floors and marble counter tops glistened from the window sun. I was underneath what appeared to be a table, and something on top of it moved in a slow scratch with the aqueous motion.

I could smell the man who brought me here. The pungent stale sleep and flavored vodka moved from the height of his gold bed spread and radiated the room. The aroma pasted the air and a dream-like pattern of events was formed.

I remembered multi-colored lights painting a dark ceiling red and green and blue. I could see the man's sly and strange mouth moving, but the words were shadowed behind pangs of music. I recalled drinking a glowing blue beverage in a heavy martini glass. The blue carbonation had now moved from my stomach to my brain, and it pounded now in rhythmic stings. I could taste the blue pain in my mouth, and imagined my brain blue and swollen and bursting at the seams towards my ear holes. The smell oozed out of every pore in my body.

Sunlight from the open window felt as though it burnt off the skin on my cheek. I crawled out from beneath the table and quietly stood in the narrow vessel. The man laid in the bed, snoring in cadence with his arms spread out forming a 'T'. He was above average looking, with a strong square face and light brown hair that seemed to be dyed by the summer.

The intensity of the sun and the lingering unpredictability of booze made me feel an urgency to leave. I swallowed the dry stale air and gagged, nearly throwing up. I picked up a plastic cup from beside me and threw it at the man. He struggled out of his snore and sat straight up.

He looked at me wide-eyed.
"Whoa! Forgot you were here."
He made fluid chomps with his mouth, like he was eating paste, and brushed his sandy hair from his forehead. "Did you throw a cup at me?"
"Yeah. Sorry about that." My profuse sweating was making me nauseous and dizzy. I felt like I'd been buried alive. I breathed in bits of lingering dust from the arid cabin and coughed as though I'd smoked for the very first time.

"How did I end up on the floor?"
"You passed out there. We were up top drinking, and you came down here to use the bathroom. You yelled and asked me where the light was. I told you it was on the wall and you must have gotten tired of looking. I came down here and you were in a ball on the floor," he put his fingers through his hair and yawned. His voice sounded harsh from the morning, and he cleared his throat repeatedly to break the stress.
"Did you pee yourself?"
"No, no I didn't."
"Good deal." He stretched his arms and yawned. He picked up a bottled water from the bedside and drank it in one breath.
"Here," he tossed me a bottle too.

Silence ensued. He belted out a series of tired sounding gargles, shuffled between bed sides three or four times, then stood.
"So...do you want me to drive you home or something?"
"Yeah. If you could?"
He looked at me everywhere for a few lengthy moments which made me slightly uncomfortable. We sat looking around for a few minutes, unsure of what to say.
"You want to, maybe...give me a blow job first?"
"No, Not right now," I said.
"Okay, okay just a thought, juuuust a thought. No harm done."
I said nothing.
"Ready?" He asked rhetorically while grabbing his keys and a shirt.

Outside the wind was warm and heavy and the sun reflected in specs on the steady blue waves. It occurred to me suddenly I was emerging from a boat in Navy Pier. The pier Ferris Wheel moved slowly in the distance. Walkers, runners, tourists, families, and bikers made the shoreline sidewalks and grass alive with movement. The yacht was amongst dozens of others, whose various owners relaxed on the docks or polished the sides of their glorious boats.

A man stood with bags of groceries and beer by "The Slippery Willy," and nodded at us coolly. A woman in cargo shorts and a Cubs hat watched my feet as my heels clanked passed her. I felt momentarily apart of this exclusive boat world. The elite recreation was something I had only observed from a passing cab. As we ascended from the dock I imagined myself truly belonging here. The ease and whimsicality of the yacht world seemed greatly divided from life that I knew. How nice it would be to have no drive home from this harbor. How delightful it would be to float away.

We crossed the underpass at Lake Shore Drive to the Navy Pier parking lot. If I'd known or cared about cars, I could have appreciated the moment, but the man's car, as far as my knowledge allotted, was 'nice'. Any car was nice to me with leather interior and clean empty floors.

We drove in palpable silence. The man played with the radio, scanning for an ease in our strange tension.

"Man I love this song," said man, turning up the dial. It was a horrible song. A radio requiem that I notably changed anytime it played.
"Me too," I said.
"So remember you broke that bottle of Grey Goose in the VIP section? You were dancing on that short table and it shattered!" said man.
The image was groggy to me, but sounded likely.
"That shit was hilarious."
I laughed forcefully.
"So this is fucked up, but I can't remember your name.. I feel like I remember most everything else besides that though, if it's any consolation," he said.
"What else is there?"
"I know you live off of Belmont. You're in law school at Marshall. You're a huge Black Hawks fan, and you're from Michigan, right?" He rolled down the windows, and the air was warm and loud while he switched lanes, exiting Lake Shore Drive at Belmont.

"Good Memory. Oh just take a right here and stop at the next light," I said. He pulled up next to a tall apartment building with a black gate and colored flowers in a small green courtyard. The car stopped abruptly, making my brain feel paddled against my skull.
"Uhhh."
"You okay?"
"Too many shots last night."
He laughed.
"Thanks for the ride."
I stepped out onto the shaded walk.
"No problem. So what's your name?"
"It's Scarlet." I closed the door.
"I'll call you." He smiled. "Oh, and sorry about that whole, blow job thing," he said, laughing and rolling up the window.

He wouldn't be calling me though, because I hadn't given him my number. And also my name wasn't Scarlet. And this wasn't my apartment.

I watched man drive out of view and I walked to the corner and hailed a cab. My real apartment was a few miles north.

On my treeless block the sun was unforgiving, and heat palpably lingered above the metal cars and business awnings. Pothole stews of garbage and dirt, fried food, and cigarette smells tangled with the hot wind, making me both nauseous and hungry at once. The door to my downstairs apartment, right passed "El Ranchero Taco," was propped open with a brick. I'd been propping it since I lost my keys...every week.

I walked into "El Ranchero Taco," my heels loud on the tiled floor. It was hot in the square room, and a large white fan blew in the street heat.

"Hola vesina," said Javier. He stood behind the counter, his arms folded across his chest, and his leg propped on the cooler.
"Hola vesino. Tienes un taco libre for me?" I said.
"Not when you speak spanglish," he smiled.
"Por favor? Javier, I'm sick." I laid my head and arms on the counter.
"I'll give you a free taco... if you give me your roommates' number." He laughed and it echoed across the room.
"Vesino sucio.."
"Kidding! Aqui vesina. Go sleep off your hangover," he handed me a taco.
"Ah. Te amo. See how good my Spanish is getting?"

Downstairs in my apartment the lights were all on, and the red windowless walls were illuminated from high lamps. I could hear Caitlin cooking in the kitchen. The couch was disheveled with upheaved cushions and tousled blankets. A condom wrapper sat on the floor by the coffee table. "The Lion King" was blaring from the television.

"Well hello my little shame shaker," said Caitlin, standing in the kitchen doorway. She held a spatula in her hand and wore an American flag swimsuit top, a headband with protruding multi-colored stars, and a diaper. Her dark brown hair was wild and curling about the headband. She had a growing belly, from late night bars and daily trips to "El Ranchero Taco", and she was unapologetic about it.

"Don't you look nice. What's the occasion?"
"I'm going to a Flag Day barbecue."
"Ah ha. What's with the diaper?"
"Two reasons. One, flags aren't funny, and neither are these friends of mine hosting the party. I needed a humor boost. Two, I'm already buzzed and its 10:30. I figure by 4 I may need it."
"Brilliant."
"I baked cupcakes, if you want one," she said, placing the finished cakes into Tupperware.
"What do they say?" I leaned over her shoulder, reading the red frosted lettering. "Susan B. Anthony. You clever cookie," I said.
"Want one? They're drug free!"
"I'm all set with my taco. Oh, Javier says 'hi'," I took the last bite.
"He wants me."
"Si indeed."
"I'm going, but call me if you want to come. I'll be there all day. Lots of free food and beer." She sat at the table, pulling up high white socks and slipping on white sneakers with drawn on blue stars.
"I'll call you."

She left. 'Hakuna Matata' blared in the living room.

In my bedroom, heaps of clothes covered my floor and bed. Books and notebooks, some open, some ripped, piled atop my desk. A dozen dead roses bent sadly on my dresser. Four empty coffee cups lined my nightstand. I changed my clothes. I braided my hair. My skin smelled like sand carpet, but there was no time to worry.

I was already late, even in advance, because leaving early could not defy the fate of my perpetual tardiness. A gust of the wind could set me back an hour. I'd forget pants. I would get lost in my own neighborhood. It didn't matter if I left an hour early or four hours early. I would be late, inevitably.

Being late perpetually hadn't gotten me fired yet, and rushing to be prompt was just another effort I had retired months ago. I tied my shoes and left, looking as 'I-didn't-wake-up-on-a-boat' as could be. I grabbed The Lion King on the way out, propping the brick in the door behind me.

Cat's Cradle- Kurt Vonnegut

Chapter 36: MEOW

During my trip to Ilium and to points beyond-- a two week expedition bridging Christmas--I let a poor poet named Sherman Krebbs have my New York City apartment free. My second wife had left me on the grounds that I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with.

Krebbs was a bearded man, a platinum blond Jesus with spaniel eyes. He was no close friend of mine. I had met him at a cocktail party where he presented himself as a National Chairman of Poets and Painters for Immediate Nuclear War. He begged for shelter, not necessarily bomb proof, and it happened that I had some.

When I returned to my apartment, still twanging with the puzzling spiritual implications of the unclaimed stone angel in Ilium, I found my apartment wrecked by a nihilistic debauch. Krebbs was gone; but, before leaving, he had run up three hundred dollars' worth of long-distance calls, set my couch on fire in five places, killed my cat and my avacado tree, and torn the door off my medicine cabinet.

He wrote this poem, in what proved to be excrement, on the yellow linoleum floor of my kitchen:

I have a kitchen.
But it is not a complete kitchen.
I will not be truly gay
Until I have a
Dispose-all.

There was another message, written in lipstick in a feminine hand on the wallpaper over my bed. It said: "no no no said Chicken-licken."

There was a sign hung around my dead cat's neck. It said, "Meow."

....

After I saw what Krebbs had done to my sweet cat, nihilism was not for me. Somebody or something did not wish me to be a nihilist. It was Krebb's mission, whether he knew it or not, to disenchant me with that philosophy. Well done, Mr. Krebbs, well done.

Consequences of Pavement

If I could comprehend the complexities of the intangible
I would have peers like Flintstone vitamins
and one proud exhale after another.
I have to drink evil to forget my heart,
but in moments of expected reciprocity
I find myself an insert-
like the occupant of a seat for just one flight.
If only the sky was blue above beautiful things
and cold and dark above the despicable.
Utilitarians and Kantians could call a truce
and Heathens would bundle above the smoking gutters
uninterrupted by tilting heads
who'd warm in blue sweaters and sip tea indoors.

there are a billion hells on the wet pavement,
hot and raining from the multitude of lazy seething eyes
stuck on something sad and perfect above them.
How much does the righteous laugh at the errors,
from their cloud carriages and billowy robes?
When the crowds in funny hats stumble into glass
and lose bits of intangible wholeness with each tripping blow.

There's so much swaying taking place
in the speed of that popular road.
I forget which way is east or west,
and the digression of that knowledge is ironically
so healthy.
Irony is a devious shadow,
I imagine it behind me in a hood
making obscene silent gestures
noticed only when moments
are rewound in my head.
Like, oh there, smirking,
holding red flares,
lighting the path behind me on fire,
but I become distracted by the speed of my feet forward
and the placement of puddles
and how great it is to splash mud on my calves.


I close my eyes and know the shade of gray on that sharp corner
and the dark barren trees lining the walk,
the branches like legs of acrobats mid flip.
I liked to believe there was no other image to mentally reside,
but the monsoons and the puke in the car
and the low gray blankets
and the blurry wind shields
from the unnatural steel placed by the water
would have killed me, I'm sure.

Irony is a Machiavellian
parading though Malta, poisoning all in a rampage
while the crowd watches noting the moments
they could have all been spared.
hiding behind the street lamps and allies,
industry rewound shows him burning ominously
while the steel hands spread higher and wider
like the accumulation of ash by Vesuvius.

Choose Your Own Puddle to Drown In

In your own eyes under the dim bulbs,
swimming in music that makes you feel infallible,
it is loud and induces movements
you wouldn't do in front of your dad.
he'd really hear you,
so you wouldn't speak either.
There are no birds near the paneled condos.
I miss the recorded screams on the platform,
scaring the pigeons away.
I told you the word today was 'pablum',
but you do not register details near the vision of you.
you said, 'hmm', fixing your hair.

I hid behind my milk,
but the elemental boy still saw.
I guess we can share a conversation,
but I know I'll think you are boring,
and you'll think that I am mean.
Mean?
Why?
Because he called me 'sport'
Or said 'goose egg', holding his fingers in a circle
or asks me how simple things are 'going', like walking.
'that a girl' he said,
and I admitted it wasn't funny.
How can I converse about your desires that make me cringe?
the voice inside sounds less and less like myself
and more like a powerful stranger.
it makes the message seem natural,
like rain
on that day when the heat was unfelt-
it poured from the hot clear sky.
I ran
and each block further,
blurry hell lingered on the pavement
and I felt warm tar down my throat.

little shirtless Asians jumped off the rocks
into the waves.
caution tape lined the melting slide.
he, who would never be too optimistic,
who would never make me puke
with one wrenching word,
came that night,
and everyone saw he would never say 'sport'
or 'kid'
or 'how's the bar treating you?'
like an inherit notion he lacks all the repugnant phrases.
because his name's not "Ken" or "Mark", perhaps.
in the room, the floor was black,
you said my dress was filthy
and we laughed
and we couldn't resist the awareness of honesty
or the three hours and one night
more clear than a whole year.
It's easy to smother though.


and just the way I'm so far beneath the surface tonight,
diving into black oceans of reef and fish,
I can hear the covered sounds above the skim-
of the tv or the phone..
the papers on my desk I need to know.
I'm scuba diving when I write.
You are the same when you see yourself,
when you watch your face and back,
lost in your movements and skin-
but both pursuits are done in vain,
under the layers of coral reef
with muzzled clarity like boats-
when selfish does not actually offend,
how should I persist to roll my eyes?

Intoxicated

On mornings when my brain shrinks,
I simulate a falling leaf when I walk.
My sweat smells like pomegranate
in the hall where I can feel my favorite taste.
In the fort, he had it on his lips
and it turned my sternum into alka seltzer.
'Transmogrification'- my favorite word for change-
wins when the words together are personified,
but 'inevitable' is most congenial,
because it's naked.

Jane Awake --Frank O'hara

The opals hiding your lids as you sleep, as you ride ponies mysteriously, spring to bloom like the blue flowers of autumn each nine o'clock. And curls tumble languorously towards the yawning rubber band, tan, your hand pressing all that riotous black sleep into the quiet form of daylight and its sunny disregard for the luminous volutions, oh! and the budding waltzes we swoop through in nights. Before dawn you roar with your eyes shut, unsmiling, your volcanic flesh hides everything from the watchman, and the tendrils of dreams strangle policemen running by too slowly to escape you, the racing vertiginous waves of your murmuring need. But he is day's guardian saint that policeman, and leaning from your open window you ask him what to dress to wear and to comb your hair modestly, for that is now your mode. Only by chance tripping on stairs do you repeat the dance, and then, in the perfect variety of subdued, impeccably disguised, white black pink blue saffron and golden ambiance, do we find the nightly savage, in a trance.