Exorcise

In the locker room at YMCA. (Chase those singing villagers out of your head.)

An awkwardly arousing wrestling match of sickening and exciting starts in my stomach at the sight of male flesh exposed everywhere – some of it arranged in piles, some in wrinkles, some in slabs, some in shapes. But really, there are only two categories: The men who should never take their clothes off, and the men who should never put their clothes on. And this man, who can’t take his clothes off or put his clothes on around those men.

But shoes – I can do shoes. Unlace, loosen, but not remove. I am not even making sock contact with that floor. How absurd it would be to have athlete’s foot and not be an athlete.

Belt – I can do belt. Unbuckle, slide, brandish. Just try to challenge my manhood, just try. I’ll wrap this belt around your neck so fast  - unless you’re into that – in which case I’ll beat you over the head with my iPod. It’s a 20G. The fucker is old and heavy. You’re not into that, are you.

I’m warily eyeing my pants when I realize this is like the nightmare where I haven’t studied and there’s a test. This metaphor is shrewder than any Shakespearean heroine. I haven’t been in a locker room since HIGH SCHOOL – that crock-pot filled with fear and seasoned with hormones.

My High School had a Young Men’s Christian Association. Not affiliated with the national organization, they focused less on being Christ and more on being an ass. They excluded me to identify them. I identified me by their exclusion. It wasn’t a fair trade. But I got out of there. And I got in here.

I’m thinking about all of this and still looking at my pants when I think I should look up. I do.

None of the men are looking at me.

Border Services

(The America Canada Border Crossing at Blue Water Bridge. I drive the car into a booth. The BORDER AGENT is an Aryan Archetype with a mole that accentuates his perfection. He has progressed beyond politeness and is exempt from eye contact.)

BORDER AGENT: Why are you visiting Canada?

ME(A schoolboy happy to know the answer): To see a friend.

BORDER A.: What’s this friend’s name?

ME: Brant. (Pause. Amiably American) I don’t know how to pronounce his last name.

BORDER A.: How did you meet this friend?

ME: Through couchsurfing.

BORDER A.(Disgusted with humanity): Through what?

ME: Couchsurfing? It’s an online network of travelers who stay with one another when they travel. (Does this sound suspicious?)

BORDER A.(This sounds suspicious): Have you ever met this person before?

ME: Yes. (That is a lie! I just lied!)

BORDER A.(Resembling a Doberman Pinscher): When?

ME: A year ago. (I lied AGAIN!)

BORDER A.: Where?

ME: In the states. (I LIED AGAIN!)

BORDER A.: Where in the states?

ME: In Milwaukee. (I can’t stop pulling lies out of my mouth! I’m like a magician with a colored scarf!)

BORDER A.(With deeply internalized rage): Take this paperwork and pull under that blue canopy.

ME(If I don’t take the paperwork do I have to pull under the blue canopy? Taking the paperwork): All right.

(I pull under the blue canopy and promise the car that nothing is wrong, but it can feel my sweaty palms on its steering wheel; it begins to panic. BORDER AGENT 2 and 3 arrive; 2 searches the car and 3 asks all the same questions, adding a few of his own.)

BORDER AGENT 3: Step out of the car please. (I do.) Is this your car?

ME: No, it’s my mom’s.

BORDER A. 3: Does she know you have it?

ME(No. I told her we were going to the zoo, but instead I stopped at a street corner, snatched her purse and kicked her out. She’s probably wandering around offering her wedding ring to strangers for a ride): Yes.

BORDER A. 3: Do you have your own car?

ME(I also have my own middle finger. Would you like to see it?): Yes.

BORDER A. 3: Who has your car?

ME: My mom.

BORDER A.3: So you switched cars.

ME(And we switched minds. I’m her right now.): Yes.

BORDER A. 3: How long is your stay in Canada?

ME(You tell me.): Until this Monday.

BORDER A. 3: When do you go back to work?

ME: Tuesday.

BORDER A. 3: Which Tuesday?

ME: This Tuesday.

BORDER A. 3: Well it comes every week. (Huffy and handing me paperwork) Take this to the inside office.

ME(Are you sure I shouldn’t shoot myself first?): All right.

(I enter the office and walk towards the roped line when I am interrupted by BORDER AGENT 4.)

BORDER AGENT 4: Just come up here.

ME(But I love roped lines. Ever since I was a kid.): All right. (I hand him the paperwork. He asks all the same questions and adds a few of his own.)

BORDER A. 4: How much money do you have?

ME: $9 in quarters.

BORDER A. 4(Laurence Olivier doing Shakespeare): $100 IN QUARTERS?

ME(Disoriented): No, $9?

BORDER A. 4(Disappointed): Oh. (Victorious) How are you going to pay for anything?

ME: I have a debit card.

BORDER A. 4: Oh.

ME: Yeah.

BORDER A. 4: Do you live with your parents?

ME: No.

BORDER A. 4: Who do you live with?

ME: My roommate.

BORDER A. 4: Oh. (Handing me the paperwork.) Take this to the agent outside.

(I exit the office and hand the paperwork to BORDER AGENT 3.)

BORDER A. 3: Thanks. Welcome to Canada.

Solong

“Do you have–”

A karaoke bar in Milwaukee is more likely to have an AA meeting than this song. The part of my ego is overplayed by a Fop, who raises a handkerchief to his nose, ready to whip out a fan when the answer is no. But before I finish asking he starts answering:

“Just write it down.”

Effrontery from a karaoke vendor! Fop and fan flail like an injured bird; painted lips prepare for a reproach. Steady, alliteration. Steady, ego. Steady, hand. Just write it down. We do. After viewing many vocal achievements of skill and shamelessness, the vendor finishes answering my question:

“OK, now here’s Ben, singing ‘This Train Don’t Stop There Anymore.’”

They have it! Now I have to do it. Those resigned piano chords trudge towards a beginning. While I am singing, I do not imagine Elton John, or Justin Timberlake playing Elton John. A screen displays the lyrics, my biography:

I used to be the main express / All steam and whistles heading west / Picking up my pain from door to door / Riding on the storyline / Furnace burning overtime / But this train don’t stop / This train don’t stop / This train don’t stop there anymore.

It was east, not west, but everything else is right. I was uncommon; by thirty I was going to be “pretty f—ing amazing.” A creature believing it could recreate itself.  My Own Private Id raced through a dark tunnel of desire.

When I said that I don’t care / It really means my engine’s breaking down / The chisel chips my heart again / The granite cracks beneath my skin / I crumble into pieces on the ground.

Broken, chipping, cracking and crumbling. This is how a Sculptor creates a sculpture. I’m not scared.

The song is over. Everyone is staring. Returning the mic to its holder, I step away from the screen.

Fuck off, we’re full.

The words are displayed across a map of the United States, like a gang tag on a brick wall, declaring turf war. Justifying this crass indictment of immigration are some helpful facts about what other countries do with unwanted humanity: imprisonment, execution. I shake my head in shame for the author. I know better!

I know I am no better.

Joseph and Mary knocked on one door. “Fuck off, we’re full.” And another. “Fuck off, we’re full.” And another. “Fuck off, we’re full.” And finally, in a stable, she gave birth to God’s son. Animals had more respect for Jesus than men.

The poor knock on our door. “Fuck off, we’re full.” Ex-offenders. “Fuck off, we’re full.” Homosexuals. “Fuck off, we’re full.” And Jesus is knocking.

Correspondence

To the voice of my first and second childhood:

I have never written to an author.

Suddenly I’m reminded of that scene in Sleepless in Seattle – have you seen it? Meg Ryan is composing a letter (with the assistance of Rosie O’Donnell) to Tom Hanks and she begins it by saying, “I have never written a letter like this in my life,” and Rosie says, “that’s what everyone writes at the beginning of letters to strangers.”

So my opening lacks originality. But, as C.S. Lewis says, “no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”

So I must simply try to tell the truth.

Your writing has uncovered parts of me that have not seen sunlight for years: mystery, purity, creativity, possibility…all considered spare parts once we reach adulthood. You make it clear these are the only parts worth saving.

When I finished reading The Changeling tonight I started crying and couldn’t stop, just like Martha. I suddenly felt as though someone knew me and was saying my name over and over, each time with more love than the last.

I hope I haven’t embarrassed myself, or you. I just had to tell you.

Ben

P.S. I can’t imagine how many letters you receive of this kind, but if you ever want to see how you influenced one of your fans, watch my poetry reading: http://parmanifesto.wordpress.com/poetry/

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Hello Ben,

I loved what you wrote about “uncovering parts of you that have not seen sunlight for years.” And I found your poetry intriguing. I can understand why you related well to Ivy and Martha. Thanks for writing.

Zilpha K. Snyder

Remaking

To the introvert, the mirror is the window. I stand before it this morning, looking out on my landscape.

Feathery auburn firmament. Two small oceans of pale blue, surrounded by white sand. One gigantic shell on the right side of each ocean. Two tunnels leading into blackness. A canyon of supple crimson, protected by faint yellow boulders. The terrain is inflamed and pockmarked.

Sorry, but I’m the only local, so I do all of the complaining and all of the listening.

Most mornings, I call in the planes, which dust the landscape with a beige powder that forgives most of the topographical flaws. But this morning I am tired. I don’t care what the tourists think anymore. No, that’s not it. I remember who made it.

Any Kind

She always seems to be posing for an Edvard Munch portrait: the splash of startled agony on her face, diluted milk skin, bowed slender appendages.

The roommate and I have often wallpapered over her personhood with explanations: mental illness, physical illness – so intoxicated with the fumes of our rational paste that we forgot our own illnesses. We are afraid: of her, for her, of ourselves, for ourselves.

Today (like every day) she is sitting on an office chair on an outdoor patio, near the front entrance of the apartment building. Just what is her occupation? Bouncer? Secretary? Gargoyle? I smile and say hello, as I do every time she is in her office. In response, her eyes widen like Malcolm McDowell in the eyelids-forcibly-pried-open part of A Clockwork Orange. Or Gloria Swanson in any part of Sunset Boulevard.

I am about to flee the scene of the kindness; I am about to close the thick curtains of disregard over my glass block sympathy; when her hand rises into the air like a periscope. Her mouth opens to reveal a dark graveyard with evenly spaced tombstone teeth and it says, “are you going out again?”

Doorman! That’s what she is. I didn’t know. “Oh,” I stammer, “No. Well, yes. In a little while.”

She leans towards me. “Would you buy me some cigarettes?”

“Oh,” I walk towards her, “yes.”

“I’ve been jonesing for a cigarette,” she says, trembling towards her concept of a standing position, then staggering like a zombie grandmother into her apartment. She reemerges carrying some crinkled bills. I ask her what kind.

“Menthol 100s.”

“Oh. What kind?”

“Any kind.”

Later, I walk to the closest gas station and ask for Menthol 100s.

“What kind?” Asks the clerk.

“Any kind,” I respond.

“I’ll get you the cheapest.”

I am on the way back, when I see a squirrel running away from another one that’s not moving. I walk towards the one that’s not moving. He is dead, laying on his belly, appendages outstretched in every direction, just inches from the curb. So perfectly preserved; he must have been stolen from a taxidermist. Eyes like dark frozen lakes, reaching for something beyond his grasp. I look up and see the first squirrel run up a tree.

She is waiting for me on the patio. I hand her the cigarettes and recount, “he said these were the cheapest.”

“Thank you.”

Pause. We are uncomfortable, but we can’t move. I feel my voice sneaking out of my mouth like a teenager out a window. This is how it sounds: ”I’d like to be your friend.”

She lights a cigarette. “I’d like that.”

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”

St. Paul convicts by way of confession. He’s like Scorpion in Mortal Kombat, throwing his arrow of truth right into my heart, pulling towards him, and then uppercutting me. But in the name of God, not revenge.

I understand why he’s upset; he’s celibate.

I know how upsetting it is. All of that extraneous sexual energy is redirected into my personality, which decides to form a color guard, with flags flailing with flamboyance, airblades slashing with wit, batons thrusting with independence, sabers stabbing with superiority.

But when the crowd goes home, I am alone. That pagan skeleton inside of me starts to dance. How sexy can it be without being sex? he asks, and his distal phalange screeches on the blackboard as he writes the equations:

(interesting person – only interested in their body) touching over underwear + kissing with tongue = delectable, forgivable

(seemingly nice person – never met them before) taking off shirts/pulling down underwear x groping organs until they orgasm = incredible, despicable

Expressions, identities, constants, variables…The math can’t explain my actions, or solve my regret. I am on the ground. I am bleeding from the heart.

Then St. Paul is at my side, offering a hand, saying, “And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.”

Independence Day

In the summer in Wisconsin, everyone goes the same direction for vacation: Up North. Unfortunately, they also do it at the same time (July 4th weekend), use the same freeway, the same rest stop, the same drive-thru – places that remind us we are only civilized if it’s convenient. It’s enough to convince even the most amicable pacifist that there is definitely an overpopulation problem, and he must do his part by buying a deer rifle and shooting just a few random people.

Some of which may be relatives.

Particularly, my Grandpa, who insists that we enter the McDonald’s drive-thru with an SUV and a trailer. I am not a prophet, but I could foresee a problem with this idea.

We place our order and begin to make the first turn. The left rear wheel squeaks against the curb, as if to say, “remember us, back here? We’re holding up a gigantic trailer attached to your ass.” I smile and nod, sweating.

Now comes the second turn. If you’re visualizing a plotline, this is the climax. The left rear wheel bumps into the curb and doesn’t apologize. The curb refuses to move. So does the wheel. We are just 10 feet from the first window. I realize there is a long line of cars behind us, filled with people who are licking their lips – not for a burger, but for a riot.

And here I am, a 500 pound bride with a 500 yard train, trying to walk down a 5 inch aisle. There will be no honeymoon at the end. I begin to panic.

Grandpa, who suggested this disaster, starts offering directions – “turn the wheel right” “no, the other right” “can you pull forward?” After a few delightful minutes of this, the drive thru employee pops out of the first window like one of the villagers in Beauty in the Beast and enthusiastically declares that I can just pull up to the second window. I spew lava at her, and she pops back in.

Then God intervenes and negotiates a compromise between the wheel and the curb, which they seal with a screeching scuffle.

Flushed with freedom, I do not even drive to the first window; I flatten the gas pedal and aim for the far end of the parking lot, but nowhere on earth will be far enough. There is an outcry of indignant disbelief from the relatives, which I silence by spewing more lava. I hand some money to one of them, which she carefully accepts like it’s a crystal figurine. Then she’s gracefully walking in the drive thru, allowing herself to be an ironic punch line for the sake of sanity.

The car is quiet. The trailer is quiet. Grandpa is quiet. We are all quiet. Waiting for peace to appear in our hearts.

Grandpa can hardly do anything himself. He needs a cane, he needs medication…but he needs to do things. He asks us to do them, so he feels like he’s doing them. Love is not independent.

Strike a Pose

“Be quiet, we don’t want to be caught,” the photographer instructs me. He turns to the roof ladder, and leaps up it like a monkey firefighter.

I try not to replay the opening scene in Vertigo. I’m a nervous matchmaker, introducing my right foot to the first rung, hoping they will like one another. They do. The same with the left. Soon both feet are social climbers, leading me to the roof.

The photographer is waiting, and the wind, sunlight and temperature are behaving like his crew – submitting to the moment.

“Now, put on the first outfit,” he says, demonstrating how a whisper can be a command.

“All right,” I say, looking through the outfits. They are overpowering; they are overdone; they are just over. But he’s a friend, so I put them on. Like Ben Folds, I do the best imitation of myself.

Soon he is telling me to do things I don’t do anymore, while making it look like I do…”give me a cocky pose.” I do. “No, like this.” He does it. I do it. “Umm, not quite, here, mirror me.” He does it. I do it. “No, come stand where I’m standing.” He does it. I do it. click. “Done. Next outfit.”

Years ago I saw Paris is Burning, a documentary about vogue balls in New York City. The participants try to pass for their opposite gender or social class. All I know is they walked down that runway like they were walking away from their old selves.