“I had already broken and defeated two men. It wasn’t as hard as I’d thought. It was easier than it looked. It was harder breaking the first man than the second, though at the time I thought it was harder breaking the second than the first. Sometimes you have to step away from the trees to see the forest. Or is it the other way around? It doesn’t matter. The point is I needed someone to break me. I felt whole. I wanted to feel split in two. I wanted to be brought to my knees with an unstoppable force. I wanted to be struck in awe and then just as forcefully awestruck. I had been once. I knew I could be again. I just needed to step away from the trees. I needed to get a glimpse of the forest.”
By Elizabeth Ellen.
I sleep until four in the afternoon and write bullshit on napkins at 4am in the little dive bar with pool players who bend over so I can check out their ass but I pretend not to notice. My only real income comes from random modeling gigs I do for artists. The models aren’t supposed to interact with the artists but I wrap my kimono around me and make the tour of the easels. I like to see how these strangers see me. A simple form of exhibition. I’m better looking on paper. But my ass looks better in person. Henry Miller would love my ass.
Goldie gave, 24/7, elegiac meaning to herself, myself, Laugh-In, Kurt Russell, Nipsey Russell, and the world outside, delighting in Fatty Arbuckle, Sally Rand, and Steve McQueen, admiring Hinduism, men’s perfumes, chauffeur-controlled limousines, sunbirds. Her diligence in diet obvious, her optimism in New Orleans out of touch, her contribution to society overwhelming, she is a prostitute, panderer, pimp, and pig. Her father was a mystic who committed suicide before he was born.
I have never been to Chicago but I have been to “Chicago.” I’m there now, in fact. It has changed a lot since the last time, which was also the first. For instance, the dead sea. I was told I might find the writer here, the chronicler who could tell me about “Chicago.” They said this was where he “lived,” but I wanted to make sure.
On the back of Pam’s school photo (her hair parted in the middle and wind-swept back, her baby blue sweater with the shoulder pads, her ill-fitting blue jeans) I took a pen and drew a mark. A few days after that, another mark. I’m not sure why but I felt the need to document, to count, the times we did it. I never told Pam I was keeping track. Perhaps I thought I was going to keep track forever, with every girlfriend, every crash-and-burn month-long failure, every one night stand.
The animals ceased to be of interest. We didn’t look for them any longer, and so we didn’t see them, unless it was fleetingly in a partially self-suggested hallucination. We only noticed the creek waters grew more and more orange.
I can’t actually hear what they say, I just know, their voices seeming to speak directly to my mind. They certainly couldn’t be lifted on the wind. There is no wind. The hairs on their heads remain flat to their skulls, sweat creating an inner ring of dampness. It isn’t surprising. They have climbed to the top of a large cliff.
Here there be neon lit nosferatu that shall suck through quarter slots, broken glass shattered in diamond sparkles against the hot concrete sidewalk around the bus stop, where you shall stand in the slightly cooler shade of the pawnshop store’s awning to escape the fulgent beams of the angry, angry August sun…
EPISCOPALIAN CHURCH TO ORDAIN SCAT TRANNIES
You watch two men curled up like babies, sucking on each other and think about joining in, even though you aren’t attracted to men in the slightest. You just want the feel of a warm wet orifice around you, but wouldn’t dare go and slip yourself inside a free space in case one of the men attack you. It’s been like this for days. You are the newest addition to the ward, but they have paid you no attention.
