path: root/old notes/walk with dean.txt

walk with dean

I keep my thoughts to myself and offer to buy dinner instead. I decide that everyone should go to dinner. I call Ulric up, but he is out of town on tour so I invite his girlfriend, but luckily she declines. Jimmy runs off to find Chloe and I suggest to Dean that he and I walk to the restaurant. Dean is never one to refuse a free meal even if it means a little exercise. He and I head off to Five and Ten, a restaurant right down the road from the cottage. Jimmy and Chloe say they will meet us there.
 Dean and I walk leisurely, trading kicks on a particularly large pecan that bounces along the road in awkward helter skelter trails. Dean stops me by clapping his hand on my shoulder and he turns facing me, ÒSil are you sure itÕs really okay if I stay with you for a while? I know youÕve been wanting to live alone since that nightmare situation with Sean and KatherineÉ.Ó
Actually itÕs been a lot longer than that, but I give him a hug and say of course not. The truth is I was getting a little lonely and could use the company. ÒTrust me,Ó I add after a minute, Òif you drive me nuts IÕll say something.Ó
He laughs and says, ÒI really appreciate it man, and IÕm glad weÕre clear on that.Ó
It's a uniquely southern nightÑthe kind that only come in late summer. The air is thick as pea soup and my shirt sticks to my skin. Sweat trickles down my back and drips off my brow. The night around us is a symphony of crickets and cicadas and god knows what other chirping little insects. Everything is alive, even the leaves sing, the air whispers in shadows. We walk in silence having lost track of the pecan. 
ÒCan I ask you something?Ó 
Dean shrugs and nods. 
ÒWhat are you planning to do?Ó
ÒWellÉ thatÕs a great question.Ó Dean gives me a self-effacing grin. ItÕs a look that seems to be drawing you into a conspiracy. HeÕs the only man IÕve ever met that consciously conspires against himself, that knows whatÕs good for him and deliberately does the opposite just to see what happens. ÒThe minute I have some idea,Ó he says,Ó IÕll be sure to let you knowÉ. I have this book IÕd like to edit.Ó
ÒSure, I said IÕd give you a hand, but I meant more along the lines of staying in townÉ or leavingÉ going back up to DC? Are you on vacation or killing some time or what?Ó Truthfully I was hoping he might be staying for a while and I would be able to hit him up for a little rent money. My savings are dwindling and I hadnÕt even been gambling.
ÒDC is definitely off limits for while,Ó Dean says slowly. ÒAs for a planÉ I donÕt have one. You know me; itÕs impossible for me to think more than a week in advance. Even thatÕs pushing it most of the time. I have some bills on my tail so I canÕt get a proper job or the governmentÕll dock my wages and that completely takes the fun out of working.Ó
ÒIÕm sure you could find something under the table around hereÉ.Ó
ÒYa probably. I have a little money saved so I can float for a while, but I really donÕt know what to do. IÕve thought about going back out to LA taking the old job back, buckling down for a while. Maybe even pulling myself up from under the creditors and what not, but every time I get to thinking about LA my stomach constricts, my chest tightens and I feel like I canÕt breath.Ó Dean pulls out a cigarette and we stop walking while I light it for him.
 ÒI hear that,Ó I light a cigarette of my own. ÒI donÕt think I could go back to LA and be happy unless there was some awfully good reason for it, and IÕve never been able to come up with one.Ó
We lapse back into silence, cars zoom by us making it difficult to walk side by side or carry on a conversation. In the spaces between them everything is a concerto of bugs. Gradually the open lots become fewer and are replaced, first by houses and then apartments and then businesses. The country to the town to the city all in just over a mile. I walk this mile and quarter or so every morning to get breakfast at the cafŽ; I know every nuance and detail of the scene, from the hairline cracks in the pavement, to the faded lettering on the old gas station sign. The restaurant is in Five Points, near the cafŽ, several apartment buildings, a sandwich shop, a laundry mat and other lovely elements of urban sprawl. Unfortunately, I donÕt remember living years agoÉ back when there was a town market, when the green grocer was downstairs, the fish market at the end of the street by the wharf, and every morning the fragrance of fresh seafood wafted into townÉ granted there was probably never a fish market in Almont. All that sort of thing was gone by the time I got here, but I have read about such vivid scenes enough to miss them. I was born in the 70Õs, in suburbia, in the architecture of fear. Prefabricated houses, four designs endlessly repeated in deliberately faceless homogeneous colors like Coral Pink, Adobe or Sandstone. Strip malls, lagoons of asphalt surrounding superstores full of plastic junk. Suburbia is isolated from both the throbbing beat of the city and the idyllic sonata of the country. ItÕs a vacuum built on fear, built by fear and built to encourage and perpetuate fear. Suburbia was built by soulless people as the final act of a suicide that started sometime after Christ was nailed to a boardÉ 


my god, my god, why have you forsaken us? 
We pass a group of people barbecuing and lounging on a porch; another group is playing cards sitting in high-backed wicker chairs. Everyone waves and says hello; everyone smiles. ItÕs as far from the strip mall suburban lagoon of LA as you can get, but it still lacks the delectable energy of the old marketplaceÉ
Jimmy and Chloe honk as they roar past us. Jimmy never misses an opportunity to drive the Falcon. Sometimes I think heÕs going to crank it up and drive the five hundred feet from his house to mine, but so far he hasnÕt. 
Five and Ten opened up about the same time I moved in last spring. ItÕs within walking distance from the house, a drunkÕs stickiest dream, but I have yet to eat the food. Drinking in restaurants is much more enjoyable than going downtown where one has to contend with the chaos and disorder of Almont nightlife. Downtown is fine when youÕre in the mood to be loud and twenty-one for a night. I feel Pleistocene tonight. I imagine on the average night, the median age in any given downtown bar would probably be twenty. Underage drinking is all but encouraged, economy supercedes petty things like law. Back when we first arrived here, Dean and I had a blast  watching the freshman classÑaway from home for the first time, just starting to drink in bars, trying to have sex, being ridiculed and taken advantage of by the townies that have been here foreverÉ Nowadays IÕm tired of it, I generally I avoid the drunken crowds. Five and Ten is never crowded, itÕs far too upscale for its location, too upscale for the whole town, and no one ever just drinks at the bar. Dean and I walk inside expecting to find Jimmy and Chloe already seated at a nice quiet table in the corner, but instead we find a horde of testosterone milling about the entrance with drinks greedily clutched in hairy palms. The hostess looks like a tired native constantly moving to avoid the Tetse flies. She seems relieved at the sight of Dean and I and patiently explains that Five and Ten is playing host to some sort of fraternity/sorority formal. Jimmy and Chloe are inside hemmed into the corner. The entire dining room is choked full of little penguin boys, and girls in satin dresses with trust fund dreams in their eyes. Over the din of hormone-charged, alcohol-fueled mating calls I manage to convince the hostess that we donÕt mind eating at the bar. We crowd into the last four stools and place our orders, me in the corner of course, which allows me to see the three of them sitting in a row. Chloe looks radiant tonight I notice, sheÕs wearing a dress and has lipstick on, two things she rarely bothers with. She must be trying to get some. I look over at JimmyÕs preoccupied face and laugh quietly to myself. 
Almont is not much for fashion consciousness, normally Dean would have stood out like a winged horse in his pinstripes, but tonight he just looks like the class guy in a room full of rental panache. Both Jimmy and I are in dirty t-shirts and neither of us cares. The art of looking good for no other reason than you can is lost on the humble denizens of this town. I gave up long ago, but Dean is inspiring me to rethink my acquiescence. 
Dean is biting into JimmyÕs pet conversation about the nature of art and the artist. ÒI hate modern literature, actually I hate almost all literature, fucking waste of time if you ask me, but I really hate modern literature. Irony, itÕs all fucking Irony. Modern writers seem to be unable to grasp the fact that irony is not interesting. ItÕs like these new bands I hear on the radio, you can just see them standing in the studio staring at their shoesÉ oh IÕm so sadÉÓ Deans voice takes on a mock English accent and simultaneously on the other side of the ocean Morrissey experiences a sudden, unexplainable, piercing pain in his back.  ÒI mean you canÕt feel irony. Think about it, have you ever felt ironic? See, what IÕm looking for when I read, is people that feel like I do or like I want to or like I try to, but I sure as fuck donÕt need someone to point out ironyÑno connection there.Ó
ÒYa but,Ó Jimmy digests briefly and then breaks out of the block at a gallop. ÒWhat about the experience of sharing the irony of the world? IsnÕt that a connection, like say whatÕs going on behind us, I know what youÕd say about it and I donÕt even know you and I guarantee you would be hard pressed to describe this scene here without being ironic. What about Wallace? Have you readÉÓ
ÒI hate tennis. Anyone who knows that much about tennis canÕt possibly have had anything even remotely like the life IÕve lived.Ó Dean has done the impossible, he has cut Jimmy off mid sentence. 
ÒThatÕs not fairÓ
ÒYouÕre damn right Jimmy, its not.Ó Dean smiles.
ÒBut youÕre missing the pointÉÓ
ÒNo the point missed me. When you read you are the passive target. The book is the one holding the gun and in my opinion Wallace couldnÕt hit the broad side of barn. And as for the scene behind us,Ó Dean turns and starts laughing. ÒA bunch of guys in tuxes trying to get laid? WhatÕs ironic about that?Ó
We all laugh. Well, actually, Chloe only smiles, and itÕs a painful, ironic smile. 
ÒOkay sure, but a good book doesnÕt make you a passive target, a good book allows for the interplay of another imagination.Ó Jimmy insists. ÒThe books that really hit are the ones where you shoot yourself.Ó 
Dean hums a little tune. ÒAlright, point taken, but I still stand by the tennis thing. I mean the minute the word tennis appears in sentence youÕve already lost me. And the idea that a good book allows for the ÔinterplayÕ, as you put it, of imaginationÑdoesnÕt that imply some necessary common ground? And in this case tennis and irony are the common ground, which for me is a tawdry foundation. The point being that irony is clichŽ, its beyond clichŽ. It implies some preverbal conspiracy that only exists because we impose our expectations on the world and then the failure to have them met becomes this word ironyÉ Construct a world of carefully lowered expectations and there is no irony.Ó
Dean and Jimmy continue arguing abstracts, but I am too captivated by everything around us to join. ItÕs a sad scene. A lot of beautifulÑalbeit cookie-cutter beautifulÑgirls surrounded by hoards of half-witted slobbering apes. 
Chloe leans over toward me. Her breath smells like Budweiser and salad dressing. Her eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep, but she is attractive in her own unusual way.
ÒHave you noticed that all these guys have permanent hat-head?Ó
I turn back around and look; sheÕs right. They all have shaggy hair that comes down straight and then curls up and hangs an inch or two over their ears, creating a perfectly symmetrical ridge on which to set a baseball hat.
ÒWeirdÉ.Ó
ÒIsnÕt it?Ó She nods her head as if only we have the inside scoop. Off camera the voice of David Attenbourgh. Humans in captivity. Notice the pack mentality, the maleÕs plumage is noticeably duller than the femaleÕs. The male must distinguish himself to a female by flushing his wad of cash, by calling out his family name, or, in rare cases, by daring to be slightly different than those around him. Observe these two specimens waiting in the lounge, notice how the male leans in toward the female as he talks, notice how his hand brushes her leg when she laughs at his witless banter. He uses this deft opportunity for physical contact to break down her instinctual walls, hoping to gain access to the sexual organs. Notice that the males without partners form a pack and circle about the room hunting for a female in estrus. When one is sighted they fairly knock each other over in an attempt to gain her attention. The lucky one that she selects through a variety of complex factorsÑincluding, but not limited to, body language, pheromones, and breeding capacityÑlords triumphantly over the scene. The remainder of the pack moves on to the next available femaleÉ.
I feel like that bird. The bird you see hanging back a bit, just slightly out of formation, stubbornly unwilling to join the aerodynamic V. The bird with a banner saying IÕm different, I didnÕt join the flock. The ridiculous bird. The exhausted bird. The bird who is in the flock, but unable to come to terms with it. The bird that used to dream of someday shitting on David Attenbourgh, or at the very least, his camera crew. The bird that used to think there was a fundamental schism between those who will pursue penguin suits and trust funds, and those who eschew it in favor of, of... The bird that knows ideology is a matter of taste. These birds around me in the tight V chose to stick with the standard conditioningÑitÕs the tradition. Other birds break off and form new flocks. Perhaps if Dean and Jimmy and Chloe and I were younger, still had patches of mottle under our wings, we could start our own gaggle, an aviary compound could be constructed, a cult born, or since weÕre in Almont it should be called a collective like the inane Elephant Six Collective, or the equally ridiculous individuals who bolt strange chunks of metal to their cars and paint random insignia and other quasi official markings on them and fly about town in a tattered flock. 
We molt. No one really gives a shit about culture. Cynicism and irony are the only means with which to discuss the matter, both of which earmark the demise of things.
I remember sitting at the cafŽ one afternoon, not too long ago when I heard unfamiliar music drifting out of a car. I liked it, it sounded good and I had never heard it before, so I wandered over and asked the driver what it was. He was spiky haired kid with a face that still couldnÕt manage stubble. He looked up at me, chewed on his tongue piercing, and said that he couldnÕt tell me. At first I thought he meant that he didnÕt know, but then he went on to say that if he told me, IÕd tell someone and theyÕd tell someone and so on until everyone liked this band and it was no longer his unique experience. I was dumbfounded. He had no other means by which to define himself. Pitiful flapping noises ensued, he drove off. 
I molt into grease stained white t-shirted ambivalence. As you were. Carry on.
ÒI donÕt understand what these girls see in themÉÓ Chloe snaps me back.
ÒOh come onÉ I mean really? Hello? Money?Ó
ÒReally?Ó her voice seems genuinely surprised. ÒI mean I guess so, but do people really lead their lives that way? I thought that was just something they put in movies to make the selfish character seem more selfish.Ó
I shrug. She shakes her head and we both turn back around to the bar. I am studying the bottles and the mirrored wall behind them when my plate of oysters arrives. I offer a couple to Chloe and we sit in silence chewing the soft, squishy flesh. Jimmy and Dean are rounding the apex of the sun and headed for earth in the smoldering remnants of a chariot. After a while Chloe asks me about SandraÕs vacant apartment. She tries to be casual about it, but her intent is obvious. I laugh and tell her IÕll call the landlords. Yes, the cult is coming togetherÉ flap flap...a collective grin breaks out on the faces of Ducks Unlimited members everywhere.
The Kumamotos disappear quickly, but poached salmon and yet another cocktail replace them. And then more cocktails, talk of cockatoos and the next thing I know the restaurant is empty except for the four of us and the waitresses who have just gotten off their shifts. I am more than a little drunk and have to hand my money to Chloe and let her straighten it out for me. Dean elects to ride home in the Falcon; I decide to walk off a little of the alcohol. 
The world has been fuzzy all afternoon, itÕs all starting to blur together now, blurring like censored television imagesÑfuzzing out nipples, asses, and the faces of the guilty. Tonight is foliage, enormous live oaks, magnolias still white in bloom, ironwood trees, sugar maples, box elder, bamboo, dense thickets of Kudzu vines so tangled that the light of the moon can no longer see through them. The road seems artificial, out of place, snaking itÕs way through the groves of trees. I can feel the heavy rush of humid air as the cars whir by me, phantasmal basket spider webs hang clear down to the road and eddies of exhaust send them arcing off in Foucaultian angles. The spider web baskets are enormous, some of them a foot acrossÑthe dancing bush on fire hanging from the branches of the oaks and eldersÑthe peach fuzz of the great mothercunt. There is no way to see it but from below, lying on your back looking up. I lie down on the sidewalk for a bit. The summer sky is midnightblue; bruised purple shadows crawl across the trees, dodging moonlight and deepening into blackness. A trance piano melody drifts out an open window and balances bittersweet celebration and medieval splendor on lyncean pinnacles. The skin has started shedding off the bottoms of my feetÑhappens every year. Underneath are the hardened callused pads that tread antediluvian paths. 
Maya hangs on suspension wires, the telephone line above me. She sings up there, throaty, warbling tunes. Maybe I will get home to find she really is travelling these wires right now, or maybe she will be playing it cool tonight. She likes to do that, play it cool. She thinks itÕs the only way things will work between us. It used to be that we talked only once a week or so, but that was back when I didnÕt know her so well. Then it was every day for a while and now its back to playing it cool. I like it both ways. I should just move up to New York and be with her, but for some reason I canÕt bring myself to do that yet. I have to let her ripen, I love her, but I donÕt know what love is and I donÕt know all of her; time will be the proving ground, but I am getting tired of waiting for myself. 
 
A girl IÕve never met is standing at the door knocking on the screen. The girl is DeanÕs doing it turns out. The girls are almost always DeanÕs doing. I have observed over the years that when Dean falls for a girl he doesnÕt just fall for her, he falls for every girl. Dean is in love with Woman; he just shifts his focus from one to anotherÉ shifts it a little quicker than they tend to be ready for. Right now heÕs in love with Sara who is knocking at the door, but tomorrow he will likely be back in love with Alexis and let us not forget the stripper downtown who calls herself Paige. Sara is trying to look like Betty Page, but doesnÕt actually know who Betty Page was. The pale skin, the dark bangs, theyÕre all there but something is missing. There is nothing driving it. SheÕs an inflatable doll Ñalmost real, life-like. She seems nice though, thoroughly infatuated with Dean, indifferent to Scratch, and a little bitchy to me. But the salient thing about Dean and I, perhaps the reason we remain friends, is that our love interests have never overlapped. Women that like him hate me and women that like me hate him and we both love and hate all of them in end. 
ÒWell I think IÕm gonna head down to the Flicker Bar to catch a blues band with Sara here,Ó Dean addresses us collectively. ÒYou kids innarested? TheyÕre supposed to be a great bandÉÓ Sara nods her head in agreement.
ÒYa, we might meet you there later,Ó Scratch pipes in and then looks around at us, Òwhat the hell is a flicker bar?Ó Jimmy explains that itÕs a movie/music venue that serves alcohol and has pool tables. Everything you need.
ÒMakes sense,Ó Scratch comments. Dean sends an eyebrow skyward offers a little wave before following Sara out the door. IÕm staring at the fan wishing it would do its job, but knowing how nice it feels to not have a job. Knowing that in the end the only job any of us ought to have is ourselves. To drive our little bodies around in pursuit of awareness and ecstasy, and it can be a tough job this one, tough on the body and soul to sail this sewage, the air-conditioned claustrophobic American night. So hot when it should be cool. So vast and yet itÕs all right in front of us all along. So nonexistent when seen from a distanceÉ Only cognac and French wine, Irish beer dark as night, gin crystal clear twinkling like starsÉ so infinite in existenceÉ yet in the midst of itÉ one starÉ one planetÉ one continentÉ one countryÉ one cityÉ just like anotherÉ. one soulÉ just like anotherÉ each oneÉ different than all the others.