The Business Model

Got around 8 people reading various parts of my manuscript. Expecting something soon. It really feels like the wind has shifted. People are ready to hear it. Much more so than when I first put it out. I suppose that something like this (a work with mostly legs) only gets more lovely and clear with age. Comes into focus. I still listen to the Pixies once in a while, but almost none to Nirvana. Van Gogh, yes, Tulouse Latrec, no. The Pixies were harder to hear at first, but have aged much better, in my opinion. Same with a lot of stuff. I’m not saying that difficulty or “legginess” is a sign of value (far from it—and don’t ever believe this hipster, obscurist, manipulative bullshit), but it is important to weigh carefully when you want to make your money and when. I want back-end. I want long money. I’ve been living on tuna fish and ground chuck so long it doesn’t really phase me, just so long as my family never has to labor at the ass-tight pace of production again (the Hawaiian term for white folks Howlie (sp?) means “doesn’t breathe”). It doesn’t matter if it takes 10 more years. If that’s god’s will, so be it. If I can raise one child with the feeling of constant and unconditional support (not niceness, or pervissiveness, but support)—and by that I mean emotional, physical and mental support—then my job here will be done. Or if I feel within myself and can radiate these same things through my actions and beliefs.

I just want to get into the game. Take this show on the road. Get some money for fuel. Or I could just goof off this summer and get the album ready. Either way.

I suppose I should be real about my book up front so there are no surprises. Since it will cost $40 up front, I’m going to ask that an agent take closer to 5% than his or her usual 10%. If the best agent I can find insists on 10%, I’ll do it for a limited time and retain the right to choose someone else down the road (if you get one thing from my site—let it be that all belief is radically rewarded). As I don’t have any plans to write five more books, and the bulk of promotions will come from other aspects of White Gold, they can expect a leisurely life themselves (if they so desire). But they gotta go to the mattresses when needed (so don’t give up your gym membership quite yet).

Then there’s the matter of a publisher. I can imagine a publisher who believes in a $40 book, on the outside chance that I can’t get to him or her, though, I’ll do the same thing. They can charge what ever they want up front, but I’m going to retain the pricing rights and ownership—gold master, etc. Maybe they get it for 5 years. Maybe 2. I don’t care about that either. But if they think I’m going to let them have my work for what authors usually get, well you can read it when I die (or buy a copy direct). Or never. I’m not even going to compete with what’s out there currently. God bless it. And if I do, it will be for as short as I can manage with as many measures of discouragement to the people I’m working with as possible. Anything else would be dysfunctional.

And as soon as I have $2 in my bank account, and am represented in every Borders, I’m gonna yank it and go to $40 with one of the new converts. Eventually, someone will just print it and distribute it for a couple of bucks a book ($7?). White Gold label only. If they don’t see how this benefits them, then there are plenty more people out there looking to produce and distribute successful products. In 10 years I expect the price to be at least $60. It’ll be as much a sourcebook for what’s happening as a good read. In my opinion.

But that’s the downside—not very appealing. Or very good salesmanship. Why not sell it exclusively at Amazon online and at Borders in the real world? Why not charge them for the privledge? This is how business works. It’s not like they’re the only game in town. Or are producing anything themselves. If they don’t want to the same thing. Flip it and jack up the price. They’ll get in now for a song—anyone will. And I’m not saying this just because I wrote the book—do it with a better book if you have one (and please send me one!). This will be commonplace as creatives come to realize and exercise their power in this idea, time, reality, and love-starved culture. The corporate world looks big and scary now, but the material world ain’t nothing but a sandwich. And you can’t eat two in a row. Bread is dirt cheap now. Love is rare. Where would you invest?

At some point it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, which is why I’m a bit dumbfounded it’s taking this long. It’s even rational. This is business’ language: a $40 book would get so much press for the price alone you wouldn’t have to spend much to promote it. Why bother. (Although to not do so would be a mistake). This whole book is a love virus. Ready to loven up the world. Loven up Western Culture. Loven up our damn neurotic dusiness. Dizz-I-ness. Busy-ness. Business. –Ask yourself this: How are we ever going to get more loving than the place we spend the bulk of our day and have the bulk of our interactions? (They had a great article in the paper the other day about how 20-somethings were creating a huge problem because they feel “entitled” to enjoy their work. So they leave lame jobs and look for something they like more. Good lord save us all. Hate dies hard—even self-hate).

What else? I’m wearing leather pants, if anyone cares. You’re certainly entitled not to. I kinda like them. They’re brown and nice leather, although in the interest of full disclosure I’ll admit I got them at the Brown Elephant Thrift Store for $15 I don’t really have. Fake it ‘til you make it, baby. Keep your hustle strong! I’ll be able to tell you soon if success comes as soon as you believe all the way.

Love to the love. Onward and Upward. Soft and tender kisses (theoretical ones—except for my future wife. Real ones for you, Sweetheart).

A Rose Grows in the White Ghetto

Few things match arriving at a favorite restaurant and them already knowing your order. I don't know why, just is.

The perfect agent for The Love Artist is the one who has had some success but now wants to go big. To change the game. Has a vision of what literature could really do if properly written, sold, and applied. Who still believes. And believes, believes, and believes.

Excuse me for a moment (I'm typing this on my phone), my number 83 is here. Tank on Broadway and Argyle, #83. That's all you need to know.

The kids (all cool) are in charge tonight so it's hip-hop. Lovely. The perfect head nod for Vietnamese somehow.

My question is why don't my people (of such considerable means) have restaurants even half as cheerful, warm and alive as a joint like this? Half of my servers (I've had 4 so far) haven't even spoken English and I feel beyond taken care of. I feel like I've been invited into someone's living room for dinner.

Maybe it's the hang out factor. There are two tables constantly filled with friends, boy and girlfriends, family and assorted hangers-on. White folks don't hang out. And when we do it's either coffee or beer and/or bread. Bubble tea (or mango stuff) and something rice produces a much more loving jag.

And then there's the love thing. White people, by and large, don't love what they do anymore. The folks here (I can only generalize) are doing it and committed. You don't bring your family to another country lightly. Their life is their life. The center is the center--and though they certainly aren't wholy different than us, there is a cheerfulness in being extended, committed and with family in the ordeal. Us white folks see work as something off the side. And don't as often feel as committed, as light, as ready to talk about it, I'm willing to posit. In a sense, I think a lot of us think our ambition is the problem, and/or that we've gone as far as we can and should maybe think about going back. My brothers and sisters, nothing could be farther from the truth. Kill that thought. (Eminem just came on--Mockingbird--beautiful).

This leaves us being reluctant leaders who also won't get out of the way. We've got the power and the $$ (and--more importantly--the world's attention) and refuse to budge. Spinning our wheels and medicating so hard we even do our kids. 3.5 cups of coffee a day, average. Add in beer, tea, sugar, wheat and TV and that's pretty much all the feelings.

So why am I sitting here like a bitch talking about other people? I'd just like to suggest you consider going all the way in this lifetime. Doing what you want all the way. Sacrificing everything on faith. And seeing if it doesn't just work. Take that freaky quiet voice and work it on out. Decide to leave it all on the field this time.

I think, like the Nation of Islam, we'll find that it's ourselves that stops us 99 percent of the time from living exactly how we want. There is no them. That's all.

I live at home with my mother (and currently sister). I'm almost 38 and I haven't gotten laid in ridiculously long. I have written a book that will change everything, though. If I can say that humbly. It's already worked for me. I'm stupidly happy. The feeling I wake up with I didn't even used to go to sleep with.

And I'm standing on the verge of getting it on. No, scratch that. I am getting it on and am on the verge of having the opportunity to get it on in boardrooms, bookstores, movie theatres, cd players, and that graystone across the street with the extra-wide, extra-long lot and the gut rehab. To show the world that we've only begun to scratch the surface of what creativity--the unknown--can really do.

My brothers and sistere, what if this is the age of from the bottom to the top? What if the meek are inheriting the earth right in front of us? What if the only way to the top is now through the bottom? The 50 Cents, the Games. And what if there was a lot more room to be meek than that?

What if a bath and a nap every day was the only way to truly get rich? (An idea pioneered by Eben Eldridge). To get enlightened? What if a herd of camels was charging toward a ridiculously large needle eye? Would you jump on? Would you drop your bullshit little backpack? Would you give up on being liberal or conservative? On insisting you weren’t white? Were indie rock or angst-ridden? Busy? Unhappy? Tired? Resigned? Would you give up on being against? Would you commit to being for! Would you demand Yes!? To everything? Including yourself?

And if the earth was dissapearing on the other side? Would you do it then?

Yes, I know you're tired. I know you thought you'd sit this one out. So did I. Believe me, so did I. I was planning on sitting a whole bunch of shit out. (Ooh, my 5th server was hot--proof that sitting it out is some bullshit. You want to fuck, want to engage, want to connect and leave the switch on. You're just a bit scared. That's okay. So am I. --She just filled my water.)

This life is real my friends. In many ways it’s much more real than we can even fathom. And as the great Haruki Murakami said, god bless him, it's time to Dance, Dance, Dance.

No more walflower for me.

(So darlin', darlin' stand by me. Ooooh, stand by me. Just remember.. Stand by me. Stand by me.)

CARE Muffler

Cash rules everything around me—C.R.E.A.M. get the money, dolla, dolla bills y’all!

Cash doesn’t really rule everything around me but I love that Wu-Tang line. If you’re already operating from your heart, get the damn money. There’s no way that by being meek you’re going to help/save/improve the world. Shake your thing, baby!

Lots of good stuff in the news these days. Newsweek on environmental (kinda) high fashion. My brothers and sisters in the middle east taking to the streets—asserting what they want. I’m telling you in four minutes it’s going to be worldwide business of culture. Real culture, not the processed cheese that passes for it these days. There’s only one way to go: up!

I think in a sense we don’t even know where we are as a culture (or even as an economy). Things have/are changing so fast and will continue to be flipping for a minute. We know intellectually that a kid from Waukegan could post one song made in his basement on the internet and go around the world in a week, but we don’t yet quite believe it. We’re still wedded to this major label/underground duality. And where once it was a pretty accurate description of what was, now it’s only here because we are hanging on to it. The power’s to the people, who are reluctant to take it, because they’re/we’re tired, a bit shook, and not quite sure we could do any better than a Slint reunion. Give me the devil I don’t know any day.

I met one of the next rap stars while getting my muffler fixed (took me two days to find a muffler place punk enough to just weld the damn tailpipe on—I had to leave the white (and adjoining) neighborhoods and go somewhere where they still take complete responsibility and aren’t afraid to do the damn thing). For my search I paid $47 for a new tailpipe and stainless steel tip (bling) instead of $230 for one without. My people, be not afraid. I heard “we can’t weld on that” too many times by guys who then smiled and handed me estimates for up to $305. A very important part of the new aesthetic is the ability to get down and dirty. Shake it like a salt shaker! Do it baby! Once you forget where your ass is you’re done. It’s not about being cheap, but real. Charge me whatever you want but don’t blow smoke up my ass.

Anyway, they took care of me on the West side. Much love.

While I was there, I ran into what I can only call a posse. It was a bunch of guys sitting around talking about how much Snoop and Dre cost to get on a track. I at first figured it to be the usual street corner speculation but it soon became apparent that they knew what they were talking about.

To make a long story short, the guy’s name is J.U.I.C.E. As he left he gave a guy sitting there a copy of his cd (one of his crew had one without cover in his coat pocket) and we went out to listen to it in my car. I was highly skeptical but intrigued. I know it’s kind of Chicago’s time right now. The track was tight, though. Killer beat and he laced it. For real. It’s getting airplay on the local stations but I’d put it up against half the stuff in current rotation. And I’m picky.

What I loved was how broke these mo-fos were and how hard their hustle was. They’re sitting there talking about $50k this and $20K for radio here or there and that they could get Lil Wayne on a track for $15K and when they get up to go, they have to check everyone to come up with the $30 to get their car out. The rapper didn’t have it, the manager didn’t have it—the girlfriend had to go out of pocket. While the sideman stated (to no one in general) that if they needed it, they had friends with money. And if they didn’t have it their friends’ friends had money.

They finally came through (and got their Range Rover out) but what I loved was that they were so full invested. Not a moment’s sweat about being currently broke and not a moment’s doubt about putting down $30K just to have someone appear on a track. Lovely, lovely. That’s the mindset I cultivate every day. Forward, forward, forward. Take no prisoners. Jesus says have no apprehension over where tomorrow’s food will come from, for as god feeds the lowly crow in the field every day, so shall he feed his people. Our part of the deal is to exercise a faith strong enough to do what it is that we want. When that’s not what we’ve been doing. Even if it takes 10 years to turn around. Especially if it takes 10 years to turn around. You don’t think that our culture will go from f-fear to loo—oove on a dime do you? No, we’ll have to pay for it, pray for it, believe it, and prove it.

When I got back, I looked these guys up on the internet (www.theconglom.com). It’s the same old story—he was somewhat of a backpacker (hip-hop’s equivalent of Indie rock) and e’ry one wants to know if he’s not selling out. Now that he’s not talking about other people. Now that he’s not spending half of his energy as a critic of the game. He may not be spitting about the holy holy, but I can guarantee that turning into what you want—no matter how it comes out at first—is holy in and of itself. Ain’t none of us cute when we go to get real at first. Yes it looks like hell. Once you get that out of your system, you can move toward your more gentle and lovely desires. There is a war going on and much props to anyone who enters the fray for $14.99 a pop. I wouldn’t do it for less than $24.

Ps: Got three agents reading my book, plus some more reading parts of it. Had one read three chapters, tell me it was marketable and ask for the rest. It’s beyond marketable, it’s nothing but legs. Kinda like Knut Hamsun’s Hunger—except that he didn’t know he would influence Hemmingway, Miller and the rest of the modern masters, so he didn’t charge for it. I’m going to. Our culture moves too fast (and isn’t loving enough to it’s artists) for me to do the same thing. I’m going to charge you for every inappropriate question asked by an insecure journalist who’s trying to make a name for him or herself through sensationalism. Through drama and dirt. And that’s a lot, unfortunately. I’m not going to submit my family to the kind of bullshit that passes for attention these days without ensuring that I have ample compensation. But I am going to take all the money and build even more loving culture and products. So it’s gonna be as if it were cheap for you.

Pulling together music gear as well. Got a new 4x12 cab—maybe for bass, got a bass—for bass, looking for studio gear, got a digital piano. VS-Gut, baby.
I’m off to church to help cook tomorrow’s breakfast.

Lots of love,

Eben

The Chickens always come Home to Roost

Hi All,

I've been visiting the Tom Peters blog and thinking about commenting on the Larry Summers thing. I even wrote up a comment. But you know what? I just don't give a fuck. I don't have a single quanta of energy to spend on what others did or didn't do. What they are or aren't. I want to create. I want to make love. I believe that that is the way out of what we percieve as "problems". Criticism and doubt was the very efficatious way in. Inspiration is the ridiculously luxurious and relaxed way out. Like Sun Ra, Bootsy Collins and George Clinton (a few of our loving modern masters) I'm on my way out.

Maybe the Jonzun Crew said it best: "Space is the Place". And I know you know. I saw you shaking your ass to Space Cowboy. Can you imagine a black man (probably from New York City) re-inventing himself as a space cowboy? What did he tell his mom, his minister, the guy at the corner store? Yippie-ki, yippie-ki, yippie-ki ayy!

Or did they already understand? And want him to succeed more than anything? Even thought they couldn't tell him. Did part of them want to be space cowboys and girls? Of course they did. Everyone's got a soul, and we're all down here waiting for the permission—for someone else to tell us it's alright—to let it loose.

Got a great quote from George Washington from Caroline Myss yesterday (through bulk e-mail): "If you do not make the mistake of many and set up your will in opposition to Divine law, you will fulfill that high destiny for which you were chosen." That pretty much nails it. Although I'd add that many make the mistake of thinking that their greatest desire and divine will are in opposition. Not so. And I"m willing to die for that one. Every day, all day. And any way. I spent fifteen years on that one. Your deepest desire is what god wants too. Not just over all—but also right now! As scary, freaky, and tender as it may be. The mistake is not going into your desire but not going into it deeply and essentially enough. Not committing.

In space there's space. Space to be yourself. But also space to be lonely. We can give ourselves the space to love right here on earth. So we can share it with other people. It may be a little more difficult, but at least we get to hang out and talk about the good stuff, be with our wives or husbands, eat real food, and breathe the air. But what this means is that we've got to tell the people we know and love who we really are. We can't wait until we meet some aliens and then try to look cool.

I went over to a friend's house last night and made a killer beat. It even had a piano sample. We took the sounds right off his drum kit and upright. Sounded good too. With another $50K I'd have the album ready in no time. Van Gogh produced a painting every day. Swizz Beats makes a song in 15 minutes (and can make up to $50K for it). WIth $7 million I'd have the worldwide distribution network set up and the flagship product (The Love Artist) out and promoted and a million heads waiting for more. Once we run this sucker up the flagpole anything that's even related will explode straight out the box. I am a marketeer, after all, and just because I decided to go straight doesn't mean I've given up any of my chops. This is viral marketing of the viral marketing of the viral marketing. The whole thing has been reverse engineered from the start. We won't have to try to move upmarket like Rocawear is doing. Or mess with KMart just to make money like Martha does. We'll start at the top and make something for everyone. I, for one, can't wait to get the $10K White G Powerbook with the dual G5s and the built-in home studio. The one with the recycled plastic keyboard, easy-swap screen, and environmentally-lovely packaging. I know my brothers and sisters are downsizing and I want to offer them products and tools that they can be happy with for as long as materially possible. Catagory Killers every one.

I'm going to take a nap, but I will leave you with this:

If you don't believe, or don't have any money, just wait. And create. There has never been a winter without a spring. Nor has a fire ever been so severe as to preclude a phoenix. When it comes it will be because we have made it.

If you do believe, or can even imagine believing, and do have money, call me up. Instead of doing guily for-profit and ineffectual non-profit, we can build an actual life. Do it all every day, every way. A lot more efficient (as if anyone cares), more relaxed, and, I guarantee, a lot, lot, lot more fun. If you want to feel it and understand that it may take your life savings (and want it to end you up being rich and feeling it)—call me up. Let's do business.

The chicken's in the pot and I know there are hungry people out there. Or let me put it this way—the fact that the chickens are absent right now has no bearing on if they'll be here later. The chickens always come home to roost! You wanna invest overseas or here at home? Overseas is hot, home is currently ignored. The chickens always come home to roost.

I spoke with a guy from the Wall Street Journal yesterday. And gave him a copy of my book.

All I need is one paragraph in the right place at the right time. I know god is in charge, but I also know he's not above waiting until I'm strong enough to put my hustle down hard. And take naps in the face of fear. (Plus, he loves a good spiritual rags-to-riches story!) He wants to be sure I can stand up for a mistake I made four years ago in a board room full of fear and demand that Vintage charge $40 for my book even though I'm living off credit cards. He wants me to be able to be stronger than money even after I get it.

I'll say it right here so the non-believers know up front. The price is non-negotiable. And I will retain the rights to the book and the rights to raise the price when it picks up steam. Which I will do. Rich white kids are going to pay $60 for the paperback at the college bookstore and fret about how they're going to get boringly drunk that weekend. Just like I did. That's their perogative. This is mine.

If you want a mature, robust, real, mass culture, consider paying for it. It's going to make Omnimedia look like a home ec. project so your risk will be well re-imbursed. I'm sitting on a love virus--waiting for the angel capital to take it round the world. Ready to have some fun?

The Love Artist—9

Chapter Two: Wednesday



ØØØ34:635:72

I tried to convince myself it was just a job, like parking cars, that a bad day at the office was inevitable. —Entertainment I was—a service that made people feel a certain way. I understood that I could not provoke an anticipated response but loathed that my competition with the translator’s idiotic certainty had rendered my own life so pale. I wanted so bad to have the unpolished truth shine higher than committeed compost.

—But I am just one man—Van Gogh painted potato eaters!

So I never told people what I was up to and got much of my material verbatim from overheard conversations. It’s easy enough to get people to reveal things by going first, by intimating a similar secret, but somehow, when I approached the more complex stuff, the only shit that mattered, the only shit that anyone thinks about anymore, all ears shut down —I am not the word, I am not the way—not the light. —So I could produce without cliché no better than they could hear the truth—even though their introduction made the whole sentence a secondary source and by definition bunk. What delicious options lie between cliché and confusion if only I could transmit the boundaries. But I’ve consumed for so long that to create thoughts, even my own, is beyond my miniscule span. And even then they come out reheated! Or insane! How to talk, how to talk. . . converse..., —ate. With an apple grenade? People’s packaging expectations alone could ruin my entire life, and I love them and so want to comply—no one wants to be lonely. Aren’t I doing everything I can? Why then the black hole?

My brain overtook me at this point and clamped down on a food service products catalog—a welcome if depressing distraction. —Beard nets, powdered latex gloves, sneeze guards, and shirts in color schemes engineered to make people hungry all flapped and flowered by like a poorly animated pigeon. I imagined a new employee at the glove factory. How confused by her product she must be, dreaming of a land that reserves such quantities of gloves.

I pulled a post-it from my pocket and wrote “surplus labor = DNA damage.” A familiar dread swept across my forehead and down over my stomach and genitals. Everything was receding …turning in on itself.

The street collapsed into the two inches in front of his eyes, and even the air was blurred by the film of sea that swamped my eyelids. As fucked as I felt, though, it was not unknown, and in a way the familiarity of these bad chemicals offered their own statuesque relief. My temples went numb and I felt my eyebrows tuck in at the ends. My thoughts slowed and settled around the prospect of leaving the planet—not as an act of violence or even one of self-negation but as an average concern—like any number of others, like the laundry—it can’t stay dirty forever.


ØØØ34:135:45

What seemed like two days later I woke up with my hands throbbing. They felt like they had been cut off and re-attached. With potential, though. My feet too.

Their emptiness shook me entirely. The straight front of my body felt like a winter prairie, desperate for clouds, grass, buffalo, even the insulation of snow—anything but another hour, day, another week, another month of wind. I was past the dry mouth and aching head—flopping over and trying to get rid of ten more minutes but waking up two hours later—my condition was wheezing and painful. I had been born on the wrong planet and improperly fitted with vital organs. My stomach hurt and my face was full of snot. I couldn’t breathe through my nose. And I needed to piss.

The television from the other room was yelling. I had balanced my coffee cup on the remote the night before, or two nights before—whenever it had been—to make it think I was watching. I guessed we matched cause I couldn’t hold a thought either. I match machines like miners match dirt, like accountants match desks and pencils and folders—they’re my thing. Most people will tell you they’re different. I’m not different. I’m the same. I’ve learned so much from busses, fallen for freeways like Thoreau did ponds and shit. My people are so busy. And my concentration’s a necessary sacrifice—my peace a panacea—to be spread like the weak manure it is. To study, to reflect, is to become if you can do it well. Disdain or detachment is only a sign of...

I turned over, pulling the gray sheets tight around my butt and pressing the excess between my knees. I had an erection that barely let me think, and my whole skin felt tight and almost good. I clamped my eyes back down and spit my gold-colored mouthguard—the high-school football type—onto the pillow next to me. I always have two pillows. What I need is a more free flow between lust and love, between friendship and fucking. It amazes me the motivated quantity of paperwork and rationalizations (sounds like Rations doesn’t it?) we pull tight to obscure our hearts and groins. I wake up with one desire and go to sleep with another, and all day I run like a crack head from both, trying for ten minutes—for ten more minutes—of solace, and thinking of a story that will allude well enough to the truth to tell people who I am. But even if they had the time… —it doesn’t matter —and I become as crass and blatant as everything else in their life. Aorta, aorta, aorta, Aorta! Never a capillary unless for effect—are we all so advertisers? —and then they really like me. But what was I saying? —Virtue? —nothing but an attempt to mediate pain. I’ll save you four years—a hand just inside your thigh during the movie and brushing her cheek as you kiss is the only reason you should ever lovingly submit to the clock. And I’d get it in writing if you can—it’s hard to love a man in full submission. I was neither awake nor asleep, but trapped between the two. It was late for getting up.

I had first seen her, as the dream that spit me out reminded me, three months before. Three long-ass months. She had been delivering papers with the guy who does that and as I came out of my front door and into the parking lot, into the pale late morning sunshine, her eyes met mine from the back seat of his car. I remember exactly how she looked because I’m infatuated with this gaze—girl behind safety glass sporting a chrome halo, question mark in her eyes. Usually it’s out of the back seat of her parent’s sedan. The sun flew off the front of her head in reflection and her head seemed to both contain and radiate light at once, as if it were exploding of unappreciated grace. My eyes hurt but wouldn’t turn away —I must have looked like a letch.

She could have been any age—that pure was her being—but she looked young and uncorrupted—she still believed. Looking out the window was for her not to lay waste or contradict, not to change what she saw, but to absorb, as if discovering a forgotten leaf or twisted piece of wire would complete the just burning picture of life she composed within. So if I felt welcome in her eyes that is why—she tempered my base motives with disbelief—with belief—she had learned neither my disease nor felt my compromise. The anxious fear of the front seat had not yet crept back and for a few more years car rides would still be a wonder.

This light, I thought standing before her, must have once captured more women —and for more years. Am I dreaming? Is there no fluid song to counter man’s loping diction? My thoughts drift back to this reflected sun often. When women are no more than men, then girls will be made over in their image, like nuns drafted to keep the soul of a race dead. —Men too—and there’s little room to grow up. I decided I must know everything about this girl, this woman, that I must meet her and watch her hands, figure the direction and angle of her chin. I must be careful, though, not corrupt her, she’s but a tiny match for the shadow of a half-saved man like me. I would distill her equation without a touch and spread the results for all, as a condemnation complete in its solution, in its love—the perfect weapon—and destroy through replacement as never before. —Just let the shit wilt.

She glanced up at me a second time. I don’t—and didn’t—know how long I’d been standing there. She was rubber-banding the pile of newspapers that took the place of the front passenger-side seat.

Her eyes came at me with force this time and she sliced through my brow. I ducked my head instinctually. Now she knew. Our engagement had begun. This is what I must not do, I thought. My head swung down and to the side —I pretended I was moving—but it was of little use. My temples burned and I felt her amusement on my back as I slunk away.

Now I was disgusted. Not as I walked away, but as I woke up that morning and remembered it. Disgusted because all I could press to my chest was machine-sewn and dyed blankets delivered in cardboard boxes wrapped in plastic and disgusted because now my future, full of women, undoubtedly, who came to a similar gaze only by pose or neurosis, seemed cement. I thought of the asexual women I had tried to shake alive, the confused women whose depression I had offered to carry as my own. I thought of rejections as shallow as my own motives, of how I had shut out the rest, unable in my feeble pride to accept a woman as human as myself. In our insecure streets the ether of intimacy, boiled down to advertised cleavage and waxed backs, clouds even my ability to be close. No, my title is a farce. I know nothing of love, —I was raised on impotent desire.

But impotence has nothing to do with women, unless it’s our mothers, it’s simply the cowardice of our lives creeping into more important realms of being.


ØØØ34:653:22

The game of school is to see how little work and how much disruptive humanity can be managed. In the third grade I convinced the two biggest boys in my class to be my bodyguards. I can’t remember that I needed them for any physical reason, but like any luxury, as soon as I realized that I could have it I did [sic]. (If only I could have carried this kind of will through one year of middle school!)

So I made it known as far as I could that I was protected, by Rodney and Anthony, two of the biggest kids in the third grade, and with their help felt safer from whatever perceived danger I faced. They also enabled me to throw my first punch—at Lee, a short and mouthy kid who probably deserved it—and go crazy on the really weird chubby kid that nobody liked one day when he decided he couldn’t leave me alone. I had never fought offensively before but he wasn’t much of a foe and within a minute I had him pinned and crying.

A crowd quickly encircled us and I was just about to give them a flurry of third-grade ‘float-like-a-butterfly-sting-like-a-bee’ superstar shit when a strange look swept across the face of my victim. I punched him a few more times before I heard what was dropping from his mouth between sobs.

“I deserve it, I deserve it.”

I couldn’t tell if anyone could hear him but was upset that the delicious billow of my violence had been deflated. I realized that I had tied myself intimately to the school’s biggest loser.

But the surging crowd was hysterical for more—this was, after all, the kid who bothered everyone constantly. “Kill him, kill him!” they screamed—desperate for some action and hoping it would come before a teacher showed up. I looked up at the ring of pumping arms and exposed molars—I couldn’t see past the first row but could feel and hear the crowd growing as kids from all over the playground ran over. No one had heard him but me. I hit him in the chest.

“Hit me more! Hit me more!” he sobbed, “I deserve it!” He thrashed his head as if suffering demonic blows and started screaming. I punched him a few more times—half-heartedly now—in the chest and on the side of his head —I can’t remember if he had a bloody nose—and finally I stood up to take my love from the ecstatic crowd.

But mostly the job entailed nothing, I would walk out to the playground with a bodyguard on either side, like an eight year-old mafia hack surveying kickball prospects. Their presence allowed slight relief but it didn’t last long. And the novelty had worn off when we learned to sneak out to the ravine across the street and smoke smokeweed. I still had to hide out from the fourth-grade girl with the ugly mouth and big butt who decided she hated me for no reason but at least I knew every route back from the lunchroom.

Anthony lived in the CD, the black neighborhood where the kids who tried to take our bikes came from—and the ones who hit us up for money if they caught us on the playground after school. He had been to my house but not me to his. I was scared and made up excuses whenever he’d ask but eventually it got too corny and I agreed to spend the night.

On the designated Friday I took my stuff to school. After the final bell rang I met up with Anthony and we walked down below the playground to the street where the busses stopped. His mom was waiting behind the wheel of her hot rod—the one I liked to draw instead of doing classwork—it was dark purple with a yellow stripe and chrome headers. Cool shit.

She pushed the seat up and we squeezed through into the back with his sister. There was a blanket over the cushions and the car seemed junkier than its paint job had suggested. I never imagined how it might look inside.

Anthony’s mom asked us all how our day had been.

—We had been talking about it at recess and Anthony had told me it could so I whispered to him and he asked his mom to peel out. We made faces at his little brother—sitting in diapers in the front seat—and taunted him until he fell over and Anthony’s mom told us not to mess around. —I guess she wasn’t going to peel out for us now. We stopped but couldn’t stop laughing, and hoped his mom wouldn’t get mad because now his brother was looking around and falling over repeatedly. It was a beautiful day and everyone was excited.

“Now Julius, make sure you call me Mom, none of this Missus Batelle stuff.” Anthony’s mom—Mom—turned up the radio loud. She listened to much cooler music than my parents, and had a stereo and speakers that had been custom installed—a huge deal to kids like us who would routinely stand at the fence yelling “mine!” at certain cars. —And this was before there were any cool ones. The trick was to see the good ones first—that’s what was cool. —Sometimes I wonder if my well endowed fellow travelers are thankful to the pimps and hustlers who pioneered their rims and tire size. And the Cholos responsible for their systems.

—So we bounced along on our little bad-ass raised back wheels, and jerked around corners cause the shit was so big. —Anthony and his sister on either side of me, messing with each other and yelling over the music and tailpipes about whatever had been served for lunch—they got hot lunch, I brought mine from home. —There was a big difference —and from a distance each difference, or the sum of such differences—getting lunch at school, cool cars, cool mom, being more—being loud, more confident—had been a source of envy, but as I sat in the middle, now that they all overlapped—and surrounded me—I felt overwhelmed —like I couldn’t keep up. The music was too loud and the car was too loud, and the people —and the window was open and his little brother in diapers looking back at me and his mom getting mad.…

As we pulled in front of their house we all agreed it would be the best night ever. I was relieved that the car and the music were gone—we would stay up late and make forts in the living room after dinner and eat chocolate pudding. Anthony’s sister offered a few ideas in the spirit of things but we shrugged her off cause she was a girl. To speed things along and ease my discomfort I agreed with everything.

Mom had prepared a special meal for my visit: barbecue spareribs, cornbread, vegetables, and baked beans—and we set the table and placed a cold can of orange Faygo just above each spoon. The table was long and stretched from the kitchen almost into the living room. It was covered with a white sheet.

The barbecue was thick and spicy and did strange things to my mouth and nose. It was good but I’d never eaten something so sweet for dinner before. Everyone watched eagerly as I sampled each dish. I was certain they could hear what I was thinking and see through my compliments and smile but I kept on. The beans were weird so I spread a few around my plate to make the pile smaller and asked for more cornbread and butter.

“Sure, honey.”

As dinner finished and it got dark outside, I knew I wasn’t going to make it through the night. I felt alone in the small strange house—and scared. My mom called and I told her everything was fine. Everyone crowded around the phone and nodded when I spoke. I tried to use a voice that would transmit my dismay in code and hoped there was something wrong that would necessitate my rescue. There wasn’t.

“Well, have a fun night honey,” my mom finished cheerfully, “I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”

“Okay mom.”

“I love you honey.”

“Alright, bye.”

I hung up the phone and suggested some TV while we waited for dessert. The distance between what I had just heard and where I found myself had startled me into action and I knew if I started the fort it would get too late and I’d lose my chance—the cushions from the couch were already on the floor. Finally, after twenty long minutes, as Anthony’s mom delivered our pudding she asked me if everything was alright. Her eyes were compassionate and slightly sad, as if she knew everything already. I must have looked like a ghost.

I told her I wasn’t feeling well and explained my condition nebulously. It started in my stomach but moved quickly to protect her integrity as a cook. Anthony and his sister’s faces fell away from their ears as I talked. Even the baby stopped banging his spoon in the kitchen. My condition got worse in the silence.

When I had endured all the eyes I could take, I put it out quietly: “Maybe I should call my mom and have her come and get me.”

I called my mom. She knew what was going on. She suggested I see how I feel in an hour and give her a call back but I assured her it was terminal. I hung up —and softer than the sound on the TV announced that she was coming to get me.

“Well, the pudding’s ready. —No reason not to eat good pudding.” Anthony’s mom said.

“Yeah.” Anthony answered. His sister echoed.

But if I ate pudding then I couldn’t be sick—“I’m not very hungry.” I said.

No one responded and as the pudding was distributed in silence I went to Anthony’s room to get my bag. It was my favorite—a black tote bag with a yellow outboard motor logo on it and a broken zipper —perfectly round at the ends. I stared at it as I stood behind the couch, alternately watching the TV, Anthony and his sister eat their chocolate pudding with milk, and the ground.

“I’m sure you can come back some other time.” Anthony’s mom said. “I’d be happy to give you a ride home so your mom doesn’t have to go through all that trouble.”

“That’s ok, she’s probably already left by now.”

I prayed for my mom to drive fast.

Finally, as Anthony’s mom collected the empty pudding bowls, I heard a honk outside and the words I had been rehearsing leapt from my mouth.

“Well, see ya at school on Monday Anthony.” —Slightly too fast. “—Sorry.”

“Yeah, guess so.” He responded. His voice was thin, —the bodyguard asked to take a bullet for his boss.

“Bye,” I said to the room, —generally.

“Bye J.”

“Bye.”

I went to school with Anthony for eight more years and as a year or so passed so did our attempts at cordial relations. This event had poisoned the well. By the fifth grade, he would sneer and threaten in front of his friends to kick my ass. I never told anyone why he singled me out, or that we had both picked mosquito bite scabs to become blood brothers with Casey in the third grade. —As he became bigger, and meaner—blacker—as he joined the football team and lifted weights and became an All-State defensive back—it became much easier to believe his hatred as groundless —that I had nothing to do with it—or that it had gone on so long that it had become cruel. And I guess that’s the appeal of a nice white power—eventually it becomes its own justification. Through fear. —Just like that sentence. We can run shit and be right at the same time—it’s not us, but We... —and privilege is to never have to learn anything different.

All this I’ve learned from people we’d call black.

> > >


But just once did I want to wake up and remember none of this—be quiet. People are gorgeous when they’re quiet. Have you ever watched your lover sleep? She is irresistible, breathe the air that rifles off the heat of her shoulder. —Follow the line of her neck down, as far as the covers allow. Memorize her smooth palm clutching four wrinkles of sheet as carefully and intent as she had you the night before. My best work comes around sleep. —The Surrealists were right: use every accident. Sleep introduces neurons that are out of place, using the brain for thought when it wants to do other or vice versa provides great mistakes —to capitalize —and learn on. If someone says something you don’t understand, say thank you —that’s the future—prophesy. —Like Rodin. Stuff you can’t make up. And new thoughts provide waves and eddies—relief from the serious rut of our constant lunge forward.

But this is what I wanted to remember none of—not who I was, not what I did the day before nor my unfortunate personality with mouth open, vocal chords flexed. How much higher I could rise without words, I thought. If I were transparent like I feel—you would love me despite it all —despite these horrible words and clothes I’ve pushed to match what I thought looked good —in the mirror —what I thought you wanted, what I thought you might want.

So something finally worked and my feet got to the floor —each cold step of tile to the bathroom made me feel twice my years. I was still hard and pissed a bit on the seat and eventually brushed my teeth. I could smell myself in the heat coming back into to the room and turned the crank on the sill to open the window a bit. A crisp flow of air brushed by my nose and raised my eyelids unnoticeably. It smelled like leaves.

I sat down on my bed and held my stomach, the tide of mucus was subsiding as my chemicals prepared themselves in the dead anticipation of another day. I wondered what I could do to avoid a similar fate the next morning.

I stood up and walked to my blathering television. It was turned down all the way but still making plenty of noise. I’d unplugged it the week before and TransWestoR™ was now threatening to repossess. I thought of artists who drove to studios filled with paints and gesso and blonde turtle-necked assistants named Chastity —who worked six hours a day and went home to their wives. Was that impossible? Six fucking hours? I could definitely get more work done somewhere else but I wanted to stay softened by sleep, not rise up and meet the lowered expectations of my peers, architecture, myself. —Stay low and let the garbage wash over, don’t respond or give it a shore on which to break. I needed to destroy machines, make room for some quiet—and clean—but all I had was disquiet and dirt. Somehow, I prayed, let my self-hatred pollute even itself.