1
If they were still alive into today, our puritan foremothers would weep at our prospects, having gotten their wishes as they sacrificed their anglo-piety to the women’s lib cause. Slacks and loafers, a quarterzip sweater and a messy bun giving me the hair of a dyke banker at forward enough angles, we’ve all become what they so desired to have us initiated into. No longer are the stuffy drawing rooms and dusty lounges of the distant New England past, no longer left to decay in forgotten side-rooms locked away by husbands and fathers to stitch and restitch blue English dresses and sip tea to induce an early death. The beast of the cotillion, mannered speech behind well-closed doors, a woman stiff, naught but appearances of bland comfort, has been killed, buried unceremoniously beneath the gazebo. We’re left in the wilderness now. The old prisons of our rooms has been replaced with a new kind of dust, black cars on quiet two lane roads, golf courses with a sort of eternal, dully throbbing sun hung above, lounges overlooking the polluted waters off Manhattan. In a way, we’ve lost the only thing solid we ever had. Emptiness on both sides, the walls between us were about the only winners, the only things made to last beyond our paling lives of restrained splendor. Now we’ve dissolved the inside and we’re all floating about, emptiness in emptiness. No more dresses, no more suits, business casual and numerical fluctuations onto the horizon.
2
It sounds like victory and movement, synthesizers and vocals yelling out at high-tension velocities, first in the SUV and then my headphones. The sun is out, birds dance in airy chirps along the backdrop the clouds provide, over manicured lawns and sphere-cut oaks, planted into mulch circles in fairy circles around the bowl-shaped park and its winding mysteries and walkways. My stainless steel watchband glimmers as it pokes out from the cuff of my athleisure, matching on the bench those who run past, bouncy steps to some out-there goal of “fitness”. The target hops along with them, pink polo and blue shorts, nike shoes, close cropped hair, cheerful smile, hey there to the passersby, the ones he recognizes and the ones he hopes to. I raise my phone and take his picture, texting it off and leaving.
3
Gunshots ring out, somewhere in the city. I don’t hear them, head down in my office, swiping the ballpoint’s blue ink across the boxed-canvas of the form. The union weeps, the journalists give eloquent speeches, the wannabe workers in the English department cry for blood. I won’t. Like when Yamaguchi-gumi spit out Otoya, we have an agreement. They could never understand what happens anyways, their blunt muscles and in out of concrete boxes to swing fists and clubs and fire their Saturday night specials at each other, at themselves, at picket lines and the people who matter. There’s a certain refinement to their art, the basic instincts of the lesser animal channeled to razor-sharp ends, like a baseball bat plunged-through with roofing nails. The hero-cops could never understand it, seething as they bleed out on the living room floor in another failure to live up to their spectral ideal of the badge.
4
Oss, oss, oss, and dinner is served. Dessert wine brought on the side as I plunge a double-twined fork into the escargot dish, oil and garlic dripping down my throat, expressed from the pores of the flesh being torn. He joins my from across, casually leaned back as we run our voices over the day’s gossip. His dick doesn’t work, though neither does my pussy. We’ve matched them to each other before, handsy stimulation as the help crawled all over us in the red-lit orientalism of a masquerade. It’s the only food we can taste, he shreds bites of raw steak between his plastic teeth. A sailing yacht is coming into port outside, barely visible as the light begins to reflect on the clubhouse windows, obscuring the dark water beyond. The sky never comes out. The moon is there as always, though so are the bodies, the light long left to join foregone celestial openings. He raises a toast and I comply, not watching what it was for. Some people think we’re rich. Some people think we’re powerful. Some would accuse us of ruling the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment