by Christopher Heffernan

The cult classic Trout Fishing in America, written by Richard Brautigan and first published in 1967, has been released in a new edition by Mariner Books, a subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.  The book has not been published on its own since the early ‘80’s when Houghton Mifflin began packaging Brautigan’s books together in single volume sets with Trout Fishing in America set together with The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster and In Watermelon Sugar.  The new standalone edition, costing $13.95, and running 112 pages has a warm introduction from former poet laureate Billy Collins but also comes with a startling peculiarity.  For the original edition and the subsequent packaged editions after the covers had been a picture of Brautigan with a woman in front of a blurred statue of Benjamin Franklin.  It may at first seem like it does not matter but the first chapter of the book speaks directly about this cover, so it seems strange that Mariner decided to change the cover to the childlike drawing of a fish that was used for the dedication page and instead put the photo that is the theme of the first chapter called “The Cover for Trout Fishing in America” inside the book, just before the introduction.  Of course the book business demands that as time goes by and tastes change so must covers change but with a post modern tour de force that uses meta as one of its key elements and has the first chapter titled and dealing directly with the cover, it is self defeating to change it. 

The book is divided up into 47 sections or chapters, each with a title, and ranging in length from one page to roughly six.  It is a quick read and a fun read and it is a read you can always go back to as the undercurrents that Brautigan deals with offer a depth that lurks in the back of each chapter and the back of the reader’s mind so that there are always new connections to be made and new feelings to be felt.  The sections are split into different threads and themes with some recurring but with no over all coherent story, making it lyrical.  But this does not make it any less of a novel.  What engages the reader is, first, Brautigan’s prose style; smooth, light, with easily read and digestible sentences that move easily and naturally from one to the other.  Then there is the clash of themes where, here, drama does not build in the character’s lives, it is built in the reader himself as the different images and scenes, descriptions and events constantly push into and pull each other along.  And then there is the aspect of metafiction, fiction that reflects upon itself.  Brautigan takes it and puts in the first chapter and references the cover, as mentioned, a photo taken in front of a Benjamin Franklin statue in a park in San Francisco. 

The self referencing is important as it starts the function of building the book as an experience in the reader.  Good books make reading an experience so that the reader is not following a story but actually having emotional reactions to the work, is actually feeling and creating memories of feeling; so what Brautigan does by opening the book with a discussion of the cover is telling the reader that the event isn’t a story, or the book, but is actually the reader, as the reader must go back and observe the cover and now knows that the author who is now the narrator knows that he is writing a thing and he’s telling you he’s writing it so that like all good metafiction he points out that the thing is not the Thing but is a reflection of it and that the real Thing is life itself.  And then he goes on with the other themes, most particularly the degradation of America, as an optimistic description of the statue of Ben Franklin statue and the word WELCOME facing the four directions, are coupled with bums at a church across the street waiting for free sandwiches.  It is a scene of poverty and a clash with the manufactured image of America that moves throughout the book.  The image is then heightened by a Kafka quote that reads, “I like the Americans because they are healthy and optimistic.”

This degradation through its many facets, the rise of technology, loss of value, loss of a connection with something more natural or organic, etc, runs the length of the book and is paralleled and contrasted with the other large thread that is of pastoral scenes of fishing.  Many of these scenes involve a family, moving around from campsites in America, illustrating the splendor of the country and the depth of its natural beauty while at the same time reinforcing the book with the metaphor for fishing, sustenance, a theme as old as Christ.  What is remarkable about the book is that although Brautigan has forgone classic structure he retained one of the oldest themes, that of life returning life to itself with the symbol of fish.  That this lost connection with nature can be retrieved through fishing.  Over the centuries this theme often involved a redemption, usually of land or character but always in the end of life.  Brautigan knows this but does not state it.  Instead he gives the reader events and description so that instead of being told what the problem is it is made implicit and instead of being told what to do about it the book, being set up as an event itself, activates the reader’s own sympathy or empathy or even urgency.  This is one of the key elements that made it such a hit in the ‘60’s.  It was a true cry, a sign, pointing directly at the clash of technology and nature and that nature was loosing—as Brautigan points out when addressing the camping craze in America that the Coleman lamp has become the beacon of these people and that it is “unholy”; and as he points to the rise of consumerism which is wonderfully illustrated in the section titled “The Cleveland Wrecking Yard.”  In this chapter the narrator finds out about a place that sells streams for trout fishing, that you can go there and build a stream, paying for it by the foot, stock it with fish and even surround it with trees and shrubs and wildlife to make a perfectly manufactured natural setting.  Brautigan’s light style makes these few pages seem almost cutesy as the narrator is picking out what he wants and discusses options as if buying a car with the salesman.  But those Brautigan undercurrents begin to creep up and the astute reader will begin to realize that it is a simple but poignant and strong commentary on, what was at the time, a rising consumerism that is now our everyday way of life.  Though we do not buy trout streams by the foot, almost everything else in our society, including our health and our bodies, has become commodities for profit. 

What stands out in the book, though, as truly astounding, is the relationship that “Trout Fishing in America” has with the reader, that it is a thing, not only the book itself, but in the book “Trout Fishing in America,” exists as an object to be explored, a personification, an event and even an entity unto itself.  Brautigan begins this creation of Trout Fishing in America as an entity right in the second chapter where the narrator wonders about when he first heard about Trout Fishing in America and there is a response after his brief musings by Trout Fishing in America itself.  This sets the stage for Trout Fishing in America not being simply an activity or even a pastoral state of mind to be reached in the tranquility of nature, but an actual entity, running around out there.  It moves, it talks, it does things.  It is at the same time a hotel and a bum named Trout Fishing in America Shorty.  It is all these things and more and Brautigan does not waste his or the reader’s time by trying to define it or explain it so that the reader may on his own grasp it.  This is where his having the book as a true experience comes into play, because it is the event of reading all of the chapters and sections against each other where Trout fishing in America is all of these different things and exists as different things, undefined and explained in their relationships that, in the end, the reader must put it all together into the actual experience, the way that any person who lives through an event puts the pieces together for a full understanding. 

It is not all completely out of bounds.  In the end Brautigan brings the pastoral family of campers to the city and the park in San Francisco with the Franklin statue that starts the book, pinching the whole thing off almost as it had begun.  Here, with their little girl, they come across Trout Fishing in America Shorty who, old and broke and nearing death beckons to the child who at first pays him attention then with a flippancy and frivolity runs away.  It is a scene of contrasts and foils, of warmth and desperation, of family and loneliness that is offered to the reader, so typical of this book and Brautigan, with no implicit meaning other than what the reader can get from it with his own senses.  

Over all the book is short and accessible, easy to read, and easy to read on many levels.  It is an exquisite example of post modernism and a triumph of literary themes and explorations that edge into the prophetic.  It is almost sad that this book is a cult classic, that its association with the 60’s and the counter culture movement has basically trumped its validity as solid work of fiction.  Hopefully, now, enough time has gone by and with the publication of this new edition by itself the up and coming generation of readers will see Trout Fishing in America for what it truly is.

An extremely long and image-dense New York art fair report by Janet Bruesselbach

Everything I shot from Wednesday to Sunday is here.

FIRST COURSE: The Armory Show

I registered as press in advance for this and showed up about ten minutes after the press conference to pick up my badge. I briefly glanced at Pier 92, where they only show dead artists, or at least which consists primarily of resale by historical, museum-level galleries. While there’s much more interest in the first market of Pier 94, the historical gap is small.
Example:

Juan Genoves, Transcurso, 2006 detail. From the press balcony this looked like a photograph but it’s really thick impasto.

As press, I have exchanged my attention and goodwill for privileged access, and operate as free publicity for the show. But as a cultural consumer advocate in the attention economy, I now consider anyone non-VIP who pays for access to be a Sucker. If you have a blog or anything I recommend you write yourself an assignment letter or just register on their site and get in free.

Maybe my research-fu is weak but I cannot find an image of how the pier is laid out. It’s basically a T. I started on the right arm of the T and methodically went down the rows. Because there are an odd number of rows on the staff of the T you can end up redundantly walking along it this way (and thereby seeing the featured Berlin part twice), so it’s best to do the arms by row and the pier over the water in a zig zag with a little overlap in the middle. It’s easy to get distracted by something on the other side and overwalk. With the white lights and walls everywhere, my eyes got much tireder than my feet. One thing I found I ended up doing was lingering in a corner staring at a piece I found completely uninteresting, just to rest.

I felt I was coming into this one with preferences different from ones I would have other years or even other days. Some of my arbitrary rules, and why:
1. Galleries that are basically retail shops for pop art stars (Hirst, for example) aren’t worth discussing.
2. I’m sick of contempt for the audience and easy cultural critique. True, just because the economy’s down doesn’t mean artists should make collector-friendly work, but conceptual laziness just means you have nothing intellectually complex to talk about. It looks like some idiot has scammed the gallery and that’s just business.
3. I’m paying particular attention to class issues as well as ethnic politics. While the Armory is aggressively post- and inter-national, it began as an American exodus for the European avante-garde. Without contemporaneity entrenched in the Obama Era we’re just looking at aesthetic balloons.
4. Things that are difficult to transport or install are interesting. Animatronics, performances, digital media.
5. But contrary to (4), things obviously marketed towards a particular part of the market - either museums or collectors - aren’t as interesting as those that really work just for the Armory. It’s like admiring mall displays. I’m looking for what is essentially intimate public art without the effects of public funding.
6. Every year I am less and less inclined to like something just because it resembles my own field, figurative painting. There’s a lot of figurative painting that’s done either photographically or non-representationally that is to be considered more as conceptual.
7. Things that would appeal to people with no art background and anything that disregards the whole modernist project hold a certain fascination, if only because I find myself so willing to dismiss them. This also goes for “bourgeouis” or “kitsch” work aimed at a theoretical market solely about interior decorating. Many critics overlook this work because it’s boring, and it does take up the bulk of the show, but it’s the sanctuary for the many many artists who just want to make beauty. Escapism is practical.
8. I like computers and science. And environmental issues. Grids, numbers, language: these are things I look at because they’re not something I can do well. HOWEVER. I am, if not a dogmatic technophile, at least an anti-Luddite, and will dismiss anything that’s simply critical of technology/modernity/”synthetic”.
9. Unless it’s something new by a favorite, I’m not looking at things I’ve seen before, either at Basel or at last year’s Armory. There are actually repeat pieces, which looks like it would be embarrassing or at least appears lazy. It could be argued that the galleries are standing behind their investments but it’s a waste of time to a spectator.
10. I am not looking at other art blogs and I am trying to see things other art blogs don’t before I read them.

Ultimately it’s just what caught my eye, which has an average sort of attention bandwidth, and VIKI’s camera.

What struck me in particular yesterday was the sort of economy simplified by postcolonialist Ngugi as the rich stealing from the rich. Or rather, most galleries are investments by rich people who consider themselves smart enough to try to find the few stupid rich people, or to catch the rich in moments of irrationality. Hence the free flow of champagne for handpicked VIPs. I can barely speculate on what percentage of art sales are gallery to gallery. At the super blue chip level there’s little to firmly connect particular artists to particular galleries besides geography, and even that’s irrelevent when the fairs, especially in an art hub like NYC, consist of the fattest international ambassadors.

Lets look at pretty pictures now.

Okay, Ian Davis does these awesome wide-angle landscapes full of identical figures, commentaries on industrial science, but I can’t find the new ones he had up and the picture didn’t come through. Look out for “hubris” and “skeptics”.

I ran into Jack Tilton, and had a look at Roberts & Tilton, his L.A. branch, which had some Kehinde Wiley (who may have stepped on me) and Titus Kaphar, who deconstructs canvases to comment on race history:

“Nip tuck” (or “Lillian Dandridge”?), 2009, Crumpled canvas oil painting.

Markus Schinwald, Carola, 2009. 22×18cm oil on canvas. 19th century style portraits of cyborgs are a good direction (and many were made in the 19th century already)

Also at Yvon Lambert was one of those “difficult to reproduce” near-conceptual museum pieces by Zilvinas Kempinas, Serpentine, consisting of magnetic tape blown in a corner by a fan.

This is interesting because apart from context it’s illustration or at least kind of gross pedophiliac erotic art. It reminds me of Gravity’s Rainbow a bit. I apparently didn’t photo the attribution - if you know it, say it.

Muntean/Rosenblum: another of these paintings entrenched in photography, but there’s something about the children/escalator imagery and the discouragement of connection between photo and caption that has a poetic kick for me.

You know what? Because I’ve been just taking photos of labels (when they were there, because they weren’t always) to attribute, I may as well use those. Let’s try that.

It is a photo of a moon landing with the astronauts made black.
No, that method doesn’t really work.

The galleries that featured shows of individual artists seemed to be very proud of doing this - it was something they could afford to do, selflessly. It definitely paid off in attention to have an immersive, consistent space. A prime example is Adam McEwan’s “I Am Curious Yellow” installation at Nicole Klagsburn, which consisted of a series in only white and yellow, including blowups of Soviet German buttons, swastikas, and large prints of an article about an Olympic runner’s alleged gender fraud.

Peter Liversidge got a bright little room with two installations (”Come On In” of handpainted dice, and “little by little” neon) including the proposals for those installations.

The preponderance of high-hung neon was nicely deflated by a Japanese artist’s smashed neon sign near the ground.

I always like what Mizuma has, but if there’s a message to take from this show it’s that Orientalism doesn’t even work any more.

My bandwidth was shutting down in protest and I started favoring one-liners. I chatted with the Andrew Kreps assistant working under a painting consisting only of the words “tiny little microscopes” for a few minutes as a kind of high-stress palate cleanser. Kreps also featured a pro-choice piece by Andrea Bowers, consisting of a pre-Roe v. Wade letter from a shudderingly oppressed woman who had no idea where to get an abortion to a sympathetic (or maybe not) organization.

English mega-gallery White Cube featured this life-size bronze of a trans man by Marc Quinn.

What I find interesting about Benjamin Edwards (”Solo”, 2010 and already sold) is that 3-d is already, especially if done right, far beyond the glitchy emptiness he foregrounds.

Limning the differences between him and Justin Faunce is a quick exercise.

SCHNELL.

I love David Schnell very much.

I wonder if the title “world map of genreal hazards” is intentional. I rather like “genreal” better than “general” or “natural”. I don’t know who did the Scrooge McDuck but it’s excellently posed for this photo op.

South African galleries felt especially strong this year. This taxidermied farcegory had a live band playing incidental music that I saw VIPs covering their ears for.

I think that’s about all I can salvage. I don’t want to declare a judgment on the show overall, because it’s a lot of different galleries trying a lot of different tactics, and sometimes the good parts are just good and the bad parts are really interesting. I’ll do further posts on the many other venues that have sprouted up this week. There are qualitative comparisons to be made, and I’d rather not debate context or content.

Oh yeah. I nearly forgot Reid Seifer’s Forget perfume booth. They had spray, for forgetting. It didn’t work.

SECOND COURSE:Scope

I went to their offices first by accident instead of the Lincoln Center tent.
It turned out an hour was enough to go through the whole thing, though. The gallerists were friendlier but unlike its Miami incarnation this one did not provide free food and drink. Given the freebie culture of NYC, calorie constraint was wise - there probably wouldn’t be enough security personnel even with well-behaved, informed crowds.
That’s part of the sense I get of New York art conventions and fairs as consisting much more of people doing business than art tourists. Art tourism is a theme of a lot of the art, but in this city, that theme is a commodity rather than meta-commentary.

Are you imagining this? Doesn’t it taste great? David Stein’s absurd books, at Eleanor Harwood from SFO, give me an opportunity to mention the weirdness of SCOPE’s corporate identity, and the political paradoxes of art. People’s Revolution, Kelly Cutron’s PR and Marketing firm, arranged SCOPE’s VIP list and opening reception. There are multiple reality shows involving these people.

The entangling of leftist politics into the corporate intentions of a field about and for the rich is morally dizzying. The deliberate imagery of appropriation, the complications of the extraordinary inequality created by an abundance of artists of all different qualities of ignorance, layered into multiple generations of terrifying people and movements and strategies, is enough to make me wonder where I even got the principles I seem to have, and how best to shut them up so I can think about this more like the emergent poly-consciousness it has already become.

Bad boy scout making noises.

THIRD COURSE: Verge

It’s young and cheap and unlikely to rise to the prominence of the one-word fairs it tries desperately to emulate. Its problems are exacerbated by being held in a midtown hotel, which does not exactly have the best lighting. There are bottlenecks in the doors of the hotel rooms. Rather than adapting to the context and the claims of these smaller fairs to embrace “emerging” and “overlooked” art, this one resembled a particularly cramped craft market.

I left a terrific opening of sculptures by Sudarshan Shetty at Jack Tilton Gallery on the Upper East Side to go to this thing. I probably shouldn’t have - Steve needed me and Jack serves food. I was hungry. Verge in the Dylan Hotel was above Benjamin Steak House and the flesh made me crazy.

There seemed to be a lot of little Japanese outfits at Verge. There was at least a comfortable middle-class feel to the thing - watching Alex at Mighty Tanaka made opening a little art-selling business look fun.

Van Uxem projects, at first glance, was a sparse and intimate vanity project, but in retrospect, Heather’s was the best use of the hotel setting, and the least commercially desperate. She projected an abstract mouthlike video on a screen beside sex toys coated in wax. On the other side of the screen, of course, she sat exhausted while her son tried to sleep and strangers walked through looking uncomfortable.

Whereas Rebecca Leyche’s Vagina Doorknobs (exactly what they sound like) were slightly deflated by their sales pitch label.

FOURTH COURSE: Pulse

Rumor is this is the best fair. It was probably worth ditching both works. Tonight’s theme: Cybernetics.

Bill Smith Magnetically stabilized, air driven, computer interfaced, chaotic emu egg pendulum, 2010. Water, vacuum formed poly carbonate, carbon graphite rod, aluminum, stainless steel, brass, wood, clay, one emu egg, pumps.
Another reason to love PPOW. They just seem to show good artists. Bill was there and very nice, very able to deal with my chaotic conversation.

Erik Thor Sandberg at Conner Contemporary.
I think what people mean about Pulse being good is that, to be cliche, it has a large proportion of art that speaks for itself.

Here’s what I came for, at the invite of the superhumanly gregarious Charlie James, who runs a damn fine gallery in L.A.’s Chinatown.

William Powhida and Jade Townsend, ABMB Shantytown, 2010, 40×60 graphite on paper
Bill Powhida is art’s snarky political cartoonist. He’ll probably unseat and replace Koons (unless we’re really post-Oedipal, and I don’t think so). He’s been working incredibly hard this year, and I don’t know why he’s not the only art anyone buys. More on this when I get to the weekend’s dessert, #class - its strength is that it’s such a relief from all the other stuff, especially the less thorough institutional critique.
Detail: “Have you seen all these grad students coming out of this giant fucking hole?”

Walter Robinson, Safe, 2009, mixed media

ALICIA ROSS. Motherboard_7 (Sacred_Profane), cross-stitch on cotton & pearled needles, 40 x 90 in, 2008
Thank you, Black and White gallery, for either reminding me or introducing me to one of those artists that makes me envious. My mission has already been fulfilled.

Shane Hope, atom_name_wildcard, 2009. These prints are made from images generated using ridiculously complicated 3-d visualization software that uses biological data. Shane Hope is a posthuman from the current future. I’d already seen his stuff because Winkleman is hosting what I like to call dessert (see Part The Sixth).

Who did the hypervirtual photo that’s on the cover of Lethem’s Chronic City? Scott Peterman, that’s who.

Laurie Hogan, Myth and Empire, oil on canvas, 2010, 48″x60″ (Koplin Del Rio in L.A.)

DESSERT:

Sunday was to be the day I caught up with the last few shows. What I missed, in order of regretting missing it:
INDEPENDENT (in the X Project / former D.I.A. building)(Art Fag City comments)
The Art Show
PooL
Volta
Red Dot, Korean, some panel on art blogging, wev.

Fountain was like a sideshow consisting of all the desperate, sad parts of the art world that all artists should be warned is what they may look like. I don’t think it was just the old dock it was in. Even the few things I saw there that I liked look embarassing in retrospect.

So I ended up in #class, an experimental project by Jen Dalton and Bill Powhida at Winkleman Gallery. It’s ongoing with seminars proposed by various artists for the next few weeks and I highly recommend going there. It is fun. It is said that the classroom, particularly in teaching art, is a utopian assertion, and yes, I have a bit of an academic fetish, but this is mine. Dalton and Powhida have already captured my cynic’s heart, their institutional critique / Marxy-Feministy drawings (where drawings mean mostly-penciled rants, lists, and charts), seperately, are especially refreshing amongst the art fairs. This kind of inside joke doesn’t work without placing itself inside its butt. If all art was like this we’d get tired of it. But still.

There was a truly involving conversation on art, school, and economics on the green board walls in chalk that made me wish I could remember more of the smart things I’ve said, and also that I could be in school forever (but also remember I shouldn’t teach). Drawings are on silent auction and bidding involves an application form.
I gave a hasty interview to “social media expert”/attention economist and former finance guy Zac Cohen. We happened by during Open Gaming, and I ended up sucking at Catan with Jen Dalton’s husband and friends. Everyone’s kids were there. Powhida showed up midway through with some story about leaving a laptop at a strip club. It was one of the happiest hours of my life. I don’t think I could have gorged on any more fairs.

I’m made nervous that everyone else there had day jobs, but better-paying ones than mine.

This shit is bananas. S-H-I-T.

JUST KIDS –Patti Smith

Harper Collins, New York, 2010

279 pps.

Reviewed by Bonny Finberg

     Patti Smith has kept her promise to Robert Mapplethorpe to tell their story. By doing so through the lens of a generation of artists in New York at that time, she’s written our story as well. Her book could be subtitiled: “Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation,” the Pete Townsend song she covered as if she’d written it herself.

     The book opens when, as a very young girl, Smith sees her first swan gliding then taking flight from the Prairie River in Humboldt Park. The sight of it “generated an urge I had no words for, a desire to speak of the swan…its whiteness the explosive nature of its movement, and the slow beating of its wings.” This prescient moment, almost allegorical, is later played out in her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe whose place in her life was in some sense that of a fairy godfather, transforming her from insecure, self-effacing duckling to magnificent swan with wings from whose powerful beating rhythm comes an artistry of overwhelming beauty. Ironically, and typical for the times, Smith makes the conscious pledge to herself to support her artist/lover by giving him the freedom of not having to hold a job while she does. She works at various jobs so he can develop his art and afford studio space, while in the evenings, accompanying him on their routine visits to Max’s Kansas City. Their first, decidedly uneventful foray into Max’s was in 1969. Andy Warhol was no longer a regular after being shot by Valerie Solanas, though his second string, so to speak remained. Hanging out in the right places in order to meet the right people, though extremely important to Mapplethorpe is only something Smith does for his sake. She describes her reticence and painful social awkwardness. They start out in the front room near the bar spending their time drinking Cokes and trying to figure out how to work their way into the back room where the art world stars drink and commiserate, engaged in repartee that resembles a Looking Glass version of the Algonquin.

     Despite her self-consciousness in the presence of the royalty holding court in the back room, she rises to the occasion, spurred on by Mapplethorpe’s relentless pursuit of entering their inner circle. After a self-executed haircut, she describes the attention and approval that finally delivers her into the sanctuary of their Mad Tea Party.

     Patti Smith’s early religious training redefined events in clearly revelatory ways. She saw art as her “calling.” Her first confrontation with art was on a family trip to the Philadelphia Art Museum. Like much of Smith’s encounters, this was an epiphany. After a short stint in a factory in South Jersey, where she lived at the time, she left for the bus stop to take the bus to New York. Her mother had given her a white waitress outfit, complete with shoes, to ensure her survival. (They ended up in the bathroom of the first and last restaurant she would ever work in.) The going was rough and she slept in the park and in doorways before finally finding a place in Brooklyn to share. Her first meeting with Mapplethorpe happened while working behind a jewelry counter. It’s the kind of meeting that romantic movies are made of and begins a deep and long relationship that spans over twenty years.

     Among other things, these two were drawn together by their commitment to art as primary over all other pursuits. They shared musical tastes, sometimes playing certain records over and over again, and supported each other’s vision. The happy balance between their differences was maintained by the admiration and recognition of the other’s perspective and method. Smith recalls the snowy Christmas night when, walking in Time Square, they came upon the billboard “WAR IS OVER If you want it. Happy Christmas from John and Yoko.” She remarks that Mapplethorpe was impressed by the idea of artists taking over 42^nd Street. She was struck by the humanity of the statement. “For me it was the message. For Robert the medium.” This was 1969. The end of the Sixties when Smith and Robert both turned 23. With the uncanny certainty and foresight he often shows in this story, Mapplethorpe declares at the beginning of the Seventies: “This is our decade.”

     Smith and Mapplethorpe’s days at the Hotel Chelsea provide one of the most compelling and evocative aspects of this book. Their time spent with Harry Smith, encounters with William Burroughs, Viva, Candy Darling and scores of others are funny and insightful. Even when Smith was not on intimate terms with some of these well known artists, her observations from her perch on a couch in the lobby opens a window into a time when the New York art world was an accessible, diverse universe for anyone with eyes and ears. She is privy to Shirley Clarke, Diane Arbus and Jonas Meekas, as they each pass through the lobby. Viva enters like an unapproachable diva in order to intimidate Stanley Bard, then owner of the Chelsea, so as to distract him from the fact of her outstanding rent.

     An interesting revelation about Smith here is that she was not so much the wild child that her stage persona suggested. She drank little, if at all, and never smoked dope. In fact, her descriptions of Mapplethorpe and Harry Smith readying to go out after smoking a joint is pretty funny. They try on various outfits and look for keys while she, having thrown some simple but hip outfit together, sits waiting impatiently. It isn’t until much later that after having smoked herself that she thinks back and understands their distraction.

     Smith’s development as a poet/performer informs some of the most fascinating sections. Her meeting with Lenny Kaye and their first performance at St. Mark’s Church Poetry Project is a Punk version of “A Star is Born” without the tragedy. There is little evidence here of struggling to become famous. It seemed that all who knew her were pushing her to go public. Once she did, she inspired adulation from the outset, and never stopped. She continues to give radioactive performances all over the globe.

     The larger part of this book covers a time of cheap all-night diners and five and dime stores full of cheap housewares, toys and kitsch that could be recycled into art objects. I’d forgotten some of these places until I read them in these pages: Benedict’s, Child’s, Lamston’s. It was a time when we made our own greeting cards and gifts by hand and paid rent that equaled about one week’s salary. It was New York at a time when you might have to struggle to survive and do your art, whereas now it seems more necessary to sacrifice your art in order to survive. It was a place where misfits from everywhere else could co-exist, if cynically, with those who came to make their fortune. You met people in the street or the park and were friends for life. You could work for two weeks as a waitress at Max’s (even if only in the front room where people got their own drinks and stiffed the waitress as I sadly learned) and make enough money for a cheap (illegal) charter flight to Europe. Pot was $15 an ounce.

     It all sounds so idyllic even in the writing of it here. Of course, being in your twenties and thirties makes any decade “the” decade. But this was before the AIDS epidemic, Rudy Giuliani, overdevelopment and, of course, 9/ll. So many were lost — people and places. But thanks to Patti Smith’s detailed records from journals and notebooks, photographs and drawings, we have them here for all time.

Mohammed Naseehu Ali

 

One

 

 

On the day of Mr Rafique’s manhood test, he woke up at half past three in the morning - an hour earlier than his normal rousing time. He had barely slept the night before, haunted by images of a market scene at Kumasi’s central, where a group of old women hawked phalluses of every size, shape, and color. He remained lying on the hard-foamed couch in the sitting room, where he had slept for the past week. He pressed his limp penis gently - the way doctors press blood pressure bulbs - hoping it would become fully erect, something he had not seen for three whole weeks.

 

He came alert on hearing the loud crows of roosters in the courtyard, and was suddenly overpowered by the crippling fear that had tormented him since the day about a week ago when his wife had accused him of unmanliness at the chief palace on Zongo street. To verify the wife’s allegations, the chief’s alkali, or judge, had ordered Mr Rafique to take the manhood test, a process that required Mr Rafique to sleep with his wife before an appointed invigilator.

 

The test was scheduled for half past four this afternoon, and the mere thought of even attempting to sleep with his wife again made Mr Rafique’s entire body numb. He brushed the fingers of his left hand around the edge of his penis. “Why are you treating me so?” he whispered to himself “Eh, tell me! Why are you treating me so?” He lifted his head from the pillow to look at his crotch, as though he had expected the penis to answer. “What am I going to do, ya’ Allah!” he said, his voice now just above a whisper “What am I going to do if I fail?”

 

Mr Rafique lifted his arms and silently began to pray in the most distant region of his heart, where no one - not even the two angels said to be guarding each mortal day and night - could hear him. He prayed for a miracle to turn his limp phallus into a bouncing, fully erect one; he begged Allah to steer his destiny clear of the imminent humiliation that threatened to put him and his family to shame.

 

Two

 

 

He remained on the couch for another hour or so, his half-erect penis cupped in his left hand. He heard the muezzin’s incantations, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar” (God is Great! God is Great!), calling the faithful to the first of their five daily worships to the Creator. He gently rubbed his penis and listened:

 

“Assala’t hairi minal-naum! Assalat hairi minal-naum!” (Worship is better than sleep! Worship is better than sleep!)

 

The mellifluous, melancholy, yet commanding voice of the crier soothed Mr Rafique’s heart into total submission to Allah. For a moment he forgot about the impending test and the agony it had brought him. His eyes were dry and itchy from lack of sleep; his mind fatigued by the phalluses he had seen in his nightmares; his body tired from sleeping on the couch for the past week or so.

 

Suddenly his mind drifted back to his inability. The fears in his heart drowned out the muezzin’s cries. He sat upright and began to pray: “Let my enemies be disappointed and ashamed of their enemy today, ya’ Allah!” He lifted his arms in the air, with a face full of self-pity. “And to those who doubt my manliness, ya’ Allah,” he continued, “prove to them that all power comes from you. Equip me with the strength to perform this test, to which I am maliciously being subjected!”

 

He closed the prayer by reciting Ayatul-Kursiyyu, the second most powerful verse in the Koran, one that is supposed to work wonders in solving all kinds of problems. Finally he raised his arms in the air, spat on his open palms, and rubbed them gently on his face. He murmured, “Amin,” lay back on the couch, and resumed caressing his penis.

 

Before long, Mr Rafique was so lost in this activity that he forgot it was almost time for the a’suba’ worship. The muezzin’s voice, distant, echoing, roused him from his fantasies.

 

“Ash-hadu al’a'ila’ha illalla’!” (I bear witness there is no god besides Allah!) the voice was reciting.

 

As if motivated by the muezzin’s invocations, Mr Rafique’s penis began to harden.

 

A minute later, it was as erect and solid as an unripe green plantain - crooked and curved towards his right thigh. Never before in his thirty-eight years had his penis been this hard. He was bewil- dered. He moved his butt sideways and spread his legs apart, so as to make way for his bulging crotch. Filled with an inner joy, a sudden desire almost drove Mr Rafique to walk into the bedroom and thrust his way into his wife. But a second thought advised him against it; he decided to wait until the test, “before the eyes of that old la’firee and the entire street. Then I will prove to her (his wife) and all my enemies that I am a fall-grown man.”

 

Then it dawned on him that the morning worship was about to begin. In one movement he sprang from the couch and got into his prayer-robe, which concealed the bulge in his loose slacks. He slipped his feet into rubber slippers and sprinted out of the room and into the breezy, dew- scented dawn. Outside, a handful of lazyboned roosters - that had just woken up - crowed. Mr Rafique ran all the way to the mosque, reciting dhikr under his breath.

 

Three

 

 

Zulaildia, Mr Rafique’s wife of eight months, was already at the chief’s palace when Mr Rafique arrived at four. She was inside the alkali’s office being briefed by the elder and the old woman picked to invigilate the test. The wife had been accompanied to the palace by two middle-aged women from her clan. They sat in the large, high-ceilinged lounge of the palace waiting for her. But long before the test day, Mr Rafique had made up his mind that all those who believed his wife’s allegations were enemies of his; and knowing as a fact that the two women with Zulaikha not only believed her but also supported her petition for divorce, he ignored their presence.

 

“Hypocrites,” he whispered. “That’s what they are, all of them! They act as if they like you, when all they are after is your downfall!” He found an unoccupied bench in the comer and sat there to wait for his turn to see the alkali.

 

The meeting with the elder was very brief- it lasted no more than five minutes. As he walked through the foyer to the test room, Mr Rafique saw at least three dozen faces and more pair of eyes staring at him through the lounge’s many windows. Not only were the people of Zongo Street watching him, but the entire city of Kumasi as well, eagerly waiting for him to fail. Ignoring the stares, he walked into the long, wide corridor that led into the second house’s courtyard.

 

Now, as the test neared, the mental and emotional anguish that had plagued Mr Rafique fell away; he was determined to redeem himself in the eyes of his enemies, to “put all of them to shame, by Allah.” Then, he suddenly realized that the presence of the lafiree would in fact be to his advantage, because Zulaikha - who would not want to be thought of as a whore - would “lie still as she received her husband,” as expected of a married woman. That excited him even more. As he walked closer to the test room, Mr Rafique felt the blood surge through his half-erect penis.

 

The old lady and Zulaikha had walked directly to the test room, at the end of a long, narrow hallway in the guest section of the palace. The palace building was composed of three large rectangular houses, each with its own courtyard and rooms numbering up to twenty-four. The test room had only one window that faced the almost vacant courtyard. The interior of the room was brightly lit by a three-foot fluorescent tube. A double-sized kapok bed was tucked in the left corner of the room and a small table sat beside the bed. The invigilator’s chair was placed facing the bed in a way that the old woman would be able to have a clear glimpse of what went on.

 

Mr Rafique paused on reaching the door. “Assalaamu-Alaikum!” he said and waited for a response. The door was momentarily opened by the old woman, who peeked outside. Despite the freckles all over her wrinkled face, the lafiree looked healthy for her age, sixty-eight. Her gra- cious smile, which exposed two gaps in her front teeth, seemed fake to Mr Rafique, who simply saw her as another of his enemies.

 

Responding to her warm, inviting smile, he grinned maliciously.

 

“Come inside,” the lafiree said, though she was quite aware of his animosity. “Call me when you are ready to begin. I will be waiting outside.” She smiled as she walked past him. Mr Rafique went into the test room. Meanwhile, a large crowd had gathered outside the palace. Groups of people had traded rumors about the test. A number of women -peanut, yam, and ginger-beer vendors - congregated near the palace gates. A garrulous woman who claimed to be the best friend of Zulaikha’s mother stood among the food vendors; and even though she carried no food she captured the hawkers’ full attention with her story.

 

“The girl’s mother did confide in me that the spiritualist they visited told them that the man’s thing had long been cooked and eaten by them witches, during one of their weekly feasts.” The woman’s small audience was rapt. “And would you believe it if I told you that it was no one but his mother who took the thing to the feast? Which only goes to show that she herself is one.” The woman lowered her voice. “No wonder she has been lying in a grass bed for nine years! Don’t tell anyone you heard this from me though, okay? It is a big secret!” She then went on to describe to the vendors (in full details) how Mr Rafique’s penis had been cut, prepared, and eaten by the witches. The women gasped at what they heard and wondered how the garrulous woman came about the information. But none of them questioned her, afraid she might stop the story.

 

Gathered near the vendors was a group of young men from about the age of sixteen to twenty- three. They, too, speculated about the test. One of them swore that he saw Mr Rafique as he walked into the palace, and that “his prick looked as if it would tear itself right out of his trousers. I tell you, Man, that was how hard he was!” the young man said. Then he challenged his listeners to a bet of a hundred cedis each if they doubted his word that Mr Rafique would pass the test. None of his listeners showed interest in betting, though they all rooted for Mr Rafique, just as most of the women and girls on the street rooted for Zulaikha.

 

Four

 

 

Zulaikha’s eyes met her husband’s as he entered the room. She had not seen him since he left for work that morning. She lowered her head and shifted uneasily towards the end of the bed. Mr Rafique stood there, without saying a word. She lifted her face, and their eyes met again. He shrugged his shoulders and moved his eye-brows up and down, gesturing - or rather signaling - for them to begin what they had come to do. Zulaikha felt like a whore, a very cheap one for that matter, given the entire city of Kumasi knew what was about to happen between her and her husband. And the fact that there were people outside the palace waiting for the results made her feel even cheaper.

 

Hatred surged through her, though not directed toward Mr Rafique, but toward the streetfolks. Shyly she looked into her husband’s sunken eyes, and suddenly felt an immense tenderness towards him. She blamed herself for all of Mr Rafique’s misfortunes, and felt that she - her marriage to him at least - had brought only ruin to him. She was filled with sadness when she thought of “the disgrace that awaited him when the test was over. I wish I knew what to do to make him do well,” she said to herself She considered telling the old woman that she had all the while been lying about her husband’s manhood, but at the same time she also knew it was too late for her to alter what she had said - “the horses were already lined up before the open field, and the derby couldn’t be canceled.”

 

Then things took a rather unexpected, mysterious turn. Mr Rafique suddenly turned soft, not under his legs, as one might have expected, but up in his chest, in his heart. In a sudden spiritual awakening, he conceded that his inability was neither his or his wife’s fault. He blamed it on the evil machinations of his enemies on the street and on the old witches who had long put it into their heads to destroy him, “though their wicked hearts shall never see that!”

 

His eyes met Zulaikha’s again as these thoughts ran through his head. And in her soft eyes he saw all the qualities that had drawn him to her in the beginning: her individualism and unusual strength, which had caused her to do things quite unexpected of women on Zongo Street. He was enchanted by her charm and confidence. Her large, seductive eyes were full of compassion at that moment. As he looked at them, he felt a passion more intense than he had ever felt for her - it was a joyous, yet aching sensation that filled his heart with love.

 

Something inside Mr Rafique proclaimed to him that the only way he could maintain his love for Zulai for the rest of his life was to part from her, “to separate myself from the spell Love casts on people … to love her spiritually, and thereby wholly.” Instantly he renounced marriage and sex altogether, and decided to grant Zulaikha the divorce she was demanding. He waited for the old woman to walk in, so he could announce his decision to her.

 

Meanwhile, Mr Rafique searched the farthest corners of his mind and heart, hoping to find the cause of his change. It seemed to him that something that was part of his Being, though much larger than his Self, had guided him to make that decision. And even though he was never able to figure out what that something was, Mr Rafique lived the rest of his life in the happiness of the new path he had chosen. “This is the only way I can retain my dignity,” he thought. Mr Rafique wished he could tell Zulai exactly what was on his mind. “She would be delighted, I swear,” he told himself

 

“Are you two ready?” The voice of the old woman squeaked through the door.

 

“Yes,” Mr Rafique answered calmly.

 

Zulaikha, looking confused, not knowing what to say or how to act, kept her eyes away from the door as the old woman entered. The lafiree - who had expected to see a lot more than what she saw - was taken aback, but she said nothing. She seemed disappointed that Mr Rafique was not on top of his wife.

 

“I have changed my mind,” he said, avoiding Zulaikha’s eyes.

 

“What are you talking about?” cried the old woman, grabbing his forearm.

 

“Myself, I don’t know, but I won’t do it even if you leave the room.” He paused, glanced at his wife, and continued. “And I hereby grant her the divorce, three times, three times, three times!”

 

“Wait, Rafiku,” the old woman said. “Why do you want to do this to yourself? You know what the Zongoleses will say, don’t you?”

 

“Yes I do! But, for all I care, they can say whatever they want to say! My heart tells me I am doing a good thing. That’s what matters to me, not what a Zongolese thinks.”

 

The lafiree shuddered at Mr Rafique’s pronouncements. And, Zulaikha, who might have been expected to rejoice, sat with eyes half-closed and tightly knit, as if she had just received mournful news. Mr Rafique took a step towards Zulaikha. He lowered his head, and with his left palm on his chest extended his right arm to her, in a gesture of love and respect. “Maassalam,” he said politely and turned and began to walk out of the room. The women stared at each other and then at his back, still unable to make head or tail of what had taken place.

 

No sooner had Mr Rafique walked through the palace gates than rumor flew throughout the street that he had failed. By the next day, there were half a dozen new stories about the test, each one a slight variation, salted and spiced as it went from one mouth to the other. Some rumors claimed that Mr Rafique had actually passed the test, but had soon afterwards pronounced the divorce, as a means of revenge on his wife. One swore that Mr Rafique’s “pen had run out of ink” in the middle of the test. Another maintained that he had failed miserably, that he “wasn’t even able to get his thing up” to begin with; that he had never been a man, and Najim was someone else’s son after all, a child forced on him by “his harlot-mother” because the real culprit had denied responsibility for the pregnancy.

 

The lafiree, who had apparently noticed the bulge in Mr Rafique’s trousers when he entered the test room, defended him. She swore by her many years and the strength of her dead husband that “the young man Rafiku is a real man! I saw his trouser-front with my two eyes, and believe me I can tell a real man when I see one!”

 

So much for the old woman’s attempt to tell the truth of what she saw. The street’s rascals nicknamed her “Madam-real-manhood.” And to the chagrin of the poor lady, that nickname followed her to her grave.

 

 

      from Tribes Issue 8}

The Itty Bitty Backpack Cure

Maggie Estep

 

 

 

One of the symptoms of being an Emotional Idiot is that I want all my ex-boyfriends to pine for me long after I have left them. Even if I was completely sick of them by the time we broke up, still, I expect them to never find a substitute for ME. I know this is grandiose but so what.

 

Accordingly, 5 months after I had left my ex-boyfriend David, when I was blissfully in love with my new boyfriend that I had left David FOR, I began to obsess over whether or not David was still pining for me.

 

I e-mailed him a note saying: “How are you?” Which, on the surface, may seem harmless enough, but what I really wanted was for him to respond, “I AM DYING WITHOUT YOU, NOTHING HOLDS ANY MEANING, I HAVE BECOME A MERE SHADOW OF MY FORMER SELF. I’M GONNA GO ON PROZAC AND END UP A HEADLESS TORSO IN A PINE BOX.”

 

But David wouldn’t play my little game. He e-mailed me back saying only this: “Please, Maggie, PLEASE.”

 

I didn’t know exactly how to interpret this. Did this “PLEASE MAGGIE PLEASE” imply that I was still pulling on his heartstrings? Or did it mean LEAVE ME ALONE, GO FALL OFF A BUILDING AND DIE.

 

I wasn’t sure.

 

 

Then, a few days after all this, something terrible happened. I was walking down 6th street with my friend Ed, who is a poet like me. Ed and I were having a pleasant talk about the vagaries of love. We were trying to get to the bottom of why I was still pining over David whom I had dumped. We quoted famous love poems. “Love is a dog from hell. Love is dove strapped to the back of a warhead, it’s the iron curtain, the iron curtain of love.”

 

So. We were walking and talking and being poetic when a big gaggle of girls started walking ahead of us. They were attractive in that All-American way that makes me totally nervous. They weren’t MY type, that’s for sure. I have slept with two women in my life, and were there to be a third, she wouldn’t look like any of those girls, I’ll tell you that much. So. These girls were walking and giggling and they were all sporting those itty bitty backpacks that are so fashionable these days. It’s like all the sudden a girl can’t have a purse or a regular-sized backpack, they have to have ITTY BITTY BACKPACKS, I mean, what’s UP with that? What the HELL do they have in those ITTY BITTY BACKPACKS?

 

My friend Ed then pointed to the girl with the ittiest bittiest backpack and said: “See those itty bitty backpacks? They’re navigational devices for young girls. Inside the backpack is a micro chip that programs their behavior and also helps them to locate each other. That’s why those backpacks are so popular now.”

 

Just then, one of the girls made a funny twitching gesture with her arm. “See,” Ed said, “her backpack made her twitch like that, soon people will be BREEDING inside itty bitty backpacks, this being the age of AIDS, they’ll just start lopping off their genitals, sticking ‘em inside the itty bitty backpacks with the genitals of someone they find attractive and they will breed more people just like them.”

 

“Yeah,” I said then, “they can’t function without backpacks and I bet they all think they’re fat even though they’re not. They wear itty bitty backpacks and gulp huge vats of Slim Fast and fantasize about being stranded in Ethiopia.” Ed laughed at that and then, because these girls were being annoyingly loud but also because Ed, like me, has a sadistic streak, as we passed the gaggle of girls, Ed loudly said: “God, what a FAT bunch of girls.”

 

The girls totally flipped out. They stopped in their tracks and all started grabbing their thighs, as if they had suddenly been STRUCK FAT.

 

But then those girls unwittingly got even with me because I right then happened to notice that on the back of the girl with the ittiest bittiest backpacks’ pack there was a sticker for the band Lotus Crew which is, you guessed it , my ex- boyfriend David’s band. The Itty Bitty Backpack Chick was wearing a sticker of my ex boyfriend’s band.

 

My little world caved in, in that instant and clarity came rushing at me like a malevolent freight train: Of course David WASN’T still pining for me, he was in fact busy having sex with an itty bitty backpack chick and had better things to do than e- mail me and his writing me a note that said PLEASE MAGGIE PLEASE in fact meant “Please go away, I’m too busy with my Itty Bitty Chicks, buzz off.”

 

This thought struck horror in my heart. Ed tried to appease me and remind me that it was me that left David and I had no logical right to expect him to pine .

 

But logic has nothing to do with it.

 

A few more days passed. Out of the blue my ex- boyfriend, David suddenly decided to call me on the phone, “Hi Maggie, it’s David,” he said.

 

“Oh, hi,” I said. “What, you managed to take five minutes off from having sex with an itty bitty backpack chick and call me?”

 

“What?” said David

 

“You’re sleeping with a girl with an itty bitty backpack.” I said accusingly, waiting for him to reassure me that no, he wasn’t doing this and if and when he EVER slept with ANYONE again, they would look EXACTLY like me.

 

“Wow,” David said then, “Good call.”

 

“Good call?” I said, horrified, “You mean you actually ARE sleeping with an itty bitty backpack chick????”

 

“Um,” David said then, “actually, it was only heavy petting.”

 

I was horrified. I hung the phone up as if it were on fire then sat at my desk feeling sorry for myself.

 

But then, magically, David’s heavy petting with the itty bitty backpack chick served as a release. Anyone who could go from me to an Itty Bitty Backpack Chick wasn’t worth losing sleep over.

 

And so, this is why I am now terribly fond of itty bitty backpacks.

 

      Out-take from Emotional Idiot. Published by Harmony Books, 1996

 

 

      from Tribes Issue 7

Simon

The more he thought about it, the worse it got.

He couldn’t stop thinking about it.

It kept getting worse.

Simon was lying on his bed in the dark. It was like his brain was accelerating and careening and fishtailing down a greased-up Mobius strip, all pumping and smashing down the brake pedal but the brake pedal is really the gas pedal (and the gas pedal is also the gas pedal). It was like floating in the vacuum of outer space with nothing but a brown paper bag to breathe in.

He was flat on his back, stretched out like Gulliver. At the moment Simon was a tiny terrified presence running in circles somewhere deep in the dark backwoods of his own mind. And he was trying to chew his teeth off. Because they were bothering him.

He’d seen this stupid commercial on TV for something or other. It had featured this guy who, with special effects, was dancing around with this huge mouth and huge huge white teeth, singing and grinning. It was supposed to be comic, he guessed, but the guy’s digitally-altered face had looked so distorted that it was unsettling, and the image had stayed with him. Then Simon had started thinking about how uncomfortable it would be to have teeth that big. Like how even when you closed your mouth, your teeth would be so big that it would still feel like your mouth was partially open. He couldn’t stand the thought of that feeling. And then he had started thinking about his own teeth and how they weren’t really all that small either. They were probably bigger than average. Which meant that maybe he couldn’t close his mouth all the way compared to the average mouth. And then all of the sudden he felt that feeling that he had imagined to be terrible, and it was just as terrible as he had imagined. He clenched his teeth together but it still felt like his mouth was wide open. He thought of that old cartoon gag where a shark has its mouth open, just about to chomp the mouse, when the mouse wedges a stick vertically inside the shark’s mouth. His own teeth suddenly felt like foreign objects that were preventing his jaws from meeting. They felt like rocks in his mouth. And now what he wanted more than anything was for his teeth to disappear and for his gums to be able to touch each other. In fact he wanted to be able to close his mouth so that they would be so closed that his lower jaw would somehow be above his upper jaw. That would be great, he thought. He couldn’t stop wanting this, couldn’t think about anything else, and his teeth felt like rocks. He wanted to spit them out.

“Hey,” said his teeth in unison.

“What,” said Simon. “Get out of my mouth.”

“You can’t get rid of us,” they jeered.

He was trying to stop thinking about it so he could sleep, but his eyes kept flying open. He’d been grinding and tonguing his teeth. His entire jaw hurt and his tongue was worn raw. He kept biting down on all the soft parts of his mouth, hating the way the flesh would give against the inorganic hardness of his teeth. The taste of blood curled in the back of his throat. He could feel the planet orbiting.

He bolted up and went to the bathroom, flicked on the light above the sink. His face was pale in the mirror. Pearls of sweat were clustered on his upper lip. He leaned into the glass and pulled his lips back. His teeth were gaunt white slivers of bone, crooked and embedded in his bright red gums.

“You’re not so pretty yourself, Simon,” they teased.

He stuck his fingers in his mouth and pried. He pried at his teeth as hard as he could, a restrained sound somewhere between a whimper and a howl coming slowly from his throat. He pulled his fingers out and stared at the saliva and the red teeth marks on his fingertips.

Simon stumbled downstairs and ran out the door of his building into the night, his fingers clutching his teeth. His nails drew blood from the fleshy backs of his gums, and his teeth were clamped down hard on his knuckles.

“Simon.”

“…”

“You can’t ignore us, Simon,” said his teeth.

“Stop, please,” Simon said, pleading.

“Simon. Simon, where are we going,” they asked.

“…”

“Oh Simon,” they smiled.

He dug his nails deeper into his gums, trying to scrape the feeling away. Pink crescents of flesh came away from his gums, stuck under his nails. Blood welled up in the bottom of his mouth. He kept running, grabbing his lips, striking his teeth with his fist, cutting his knuckles. He clawed his face until his cheeks bled.

As he ran, he stumbled and fell in the dirt. A sharp rock tore his pant at the knee, and he writhed on the ground with a hand on his knee and a hand in his mouth. When the pain subsided, he sat up and took the rock in his palm.

“What are you doing, Simon,” said his teeth.

“…”

“You don’t have the balls,” they snorted.

Simon grinned big and brought the rock to his mouth, hard, and again, harder. Sparks flew behind his eyes. His head went numb. He put the rock between his teeth and bit, hard, feeling his jaws close and crunch, until he felt his gums hit stone. He spat bone and blood.

Putting the rock down, he scooped up the mixture of dirt and broken teeth from the ground to examine. It looked just like a handful of old shattered porcelain. They were lifeless.

Simon gripped the rail in the crooks of his elbows and adjusted his feet along the narrow edge of the drop. The concrete was slick. He peered down at the ink-black water, watched it rush relentlessly underneath him and under the bridge. He imagined the initial impact and the coldness, and then he imagined his body being swept away in it, first maybe bobbing in it like a buoy, and then soon getting pulled under, tumbling head over heels and hitting sharp rocks and letting the dark water flood his lungs. He imagined being discovered later by an old man and his dog, halfway beached on a muddy bank on a chilly afternoon, and then getting dragged into an old ambulance, all bloated and gray like an overripe fruit. They would try to identify him with dental records but would discover that he didn’t have any teeth. He imagined being sealed inside a wooden coffin at a closed-casket funeral with no one there but himself and the chain-smoking pastor, and he imagined how his body would knock around in the wooden box while they dropped it into the ground and after that it would be maybe like sleeping.

He closed his eyes and clenched his gums together, feeling the sharp broken bits of teeth still embedded in them, and then he did a swan dive.

But his loosened necktie caught onto something, and suddenly he was jerked by the neck so hard it almost snapped his head off. Then he was hanging with his feet dangling over the water. His own weight was tightening his necktie around his neck like a noose. He choked and kicked. One of his oxfords kicked off and dropped into the river. And suddenly a pair of powerful arms pulled him up. He was being rescued. They flopped him violently back onto the bridge like a big fish and he lay there, stunned.

When he stumbled to his feet, a pair of cold hands closed around his neck, and he found himself staring into a face that made his gut drop into the seat of his pants. The face looked too ancient to be alive, its skin nearly decomposing and its wrinkled mouth stretched open and hissing, and he felt its horrible breath on his face. It smelled like the dead. Its single eye bore into him from its sunken socket. Its cold gray iris looked like compressed metal. He started to scream, but something slammed down on his head and he crumbled.

He stood up again, this time like a baby standing for the first time. The world spun and swirled around his head and he could barely see anything, but he knew he had to run and he ran. He moved his legs and he was only dimly aware of what he was doing, but could hear the ground moving underneath him. As he ran, he brought his fingers to his head. He could feel his skull broken, could shift the broken shards of bone around like pieces of a broken plate. He bore his fingers in, past the skull into the warm wet mysteries of his head until he poked something spongy. The taste of strawberries suddenly bloomed in his mouth.

He licked his lips and wedged his finger deeper into a crevice. He thought he heard some music, as if it were playing on a distant radio somewhere. There were mandolins. It wasn’t like any song he’d ever heard before, but it still sounded familiar and he started humming to it while stumbling over concrete. He felt kind of happy for a moment. Then world around him shifted purple and he was running upside-down, and suddenly he was lying in his crib in the dark, gazing up at the moon in the window. It was big, white and round, and he reached his baby arms up to catch it, but his hands came together with nothing. It wasn’t as close as he thought.

He snapped back to the present, still running. He moved his fingers into another crevice in his head, jammed them deep, and curled his fingers. Time began to slow down. He was still running, but his steps were in slow motion. He floated in the air for what felt like a few seconds before his other foot touched the ground again, like he was Neil Armstrong. Time slowed further and further until he wasn’t moving at all, just suspended with one foot frozen in the air. Everything was silent. The river had stopped moving. And then his feet started moving slowly backwards. He was rewinding, running in reverse, now at full speed. The black river was now making a loud sucking sound instead of a roar, flowing backwards. His shoe reemerged from under the bridge and flew back onto his foot. His teeth came out of the dirt and reconstructed themselves in his mouth. The blood on his face and shirt sucked back up into his vessels. He ran backwards all the way home, his tally of steps diminishing, counting down. Things began to rewind faster. He ran backwards out of his office building at what felt like 100 miles per hour until they hadn’t hired him yet, and then he was speeding backwards through college, kissing his first girlfriend for the first time, and then wondering whether or not he would lean in for a kiss. High school and junior high blurred by even faster as he flew out of trashcans and fists flew from his face back into the pockets of letterman jackets. He wondered what he wanted to be when he grew up. He ran back further and watched his father’s head reattach itself to his body. Pet goldfish flew out of toilets into their pickle jars. And then he was a toothing infant again, and he hadn’t learned to walk yet, and so his step tally was at zero, and soon he was lying in his crib, and hadn’t yet stretched out his arms, and the moon was still in reach, floating right above him, ready to be grabbed by his baby hands and played with.

He heard short steps approaching close behind him. It was night, and his teeth were broken, and he was running forwards. The river was roaring. He looked up at the sky and saw the moon. It was bright and round. He removed his fingers from his head and began reaching for it, but something smashed his skull again and the moon disappeared and he was dead.