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Thursday, March 6th, 2003
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7:00 pm - Creative Non-Fiction Writing
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HALF MELTED SUNDAE
By Henry Jenkins
People often ask me about the ghost who lived in our room. She was nineteen, chubby, acme ridden and wore a vomit colored sweater – threads of brown, yellow and slime green woven together. She was Hispanic, devoutly Catholic and came from the Bakersfield ghetto where she’d been branded promiscuous trash, lost her fiancé to another woman, her father through divorce and her mother through incompatability. But she’d found a new home in the arms of a deathly quiet computer nerd she’d known since she was a kid. He’d asked her out when they younger and she’d laugh in his face. But he stood by her through her engagement, loving her deeply, until one day she opened her door to him. Her name was Christine.
She wasn’t dead like other ghosts. She’d sit on my bed and run her fingers through my hair over and over again. I’d rest my head against her breast and feel like I was wrapped in thick, warm cotton in some dark void where no one could ever bother me. More than anything in the world she loved classic love songs, the kind strangers sing along to on the fourth of July. I’d wake up in the mornings to her singing Brown Eyed Girl or Tiny Dancer. Sometimes she seemed to belong in those songs, a modern day Cinderella.
Despite bad genetics she was enchantingly beautiful. She slaved her life away in menial labor to pay for a bad education at the Santa Barbara Community College and despite being deeper than most of the private school kids I’d known she aspired to nothing more than a loving husband and three or four children. She often described her wedding to me – how she’d walk down the isle to The Indigo Girl’s Romeo and Juliet in an enormous cathedral filled with everyone she’d ever known. They’d serve ice cream at the reception.
Dorm policy forbid us to live with members of the opposite sex but the administration was pretty cool about it under the circumstances. In their eyes she was a visitor arriving each morning and leaving each night. If anyone ever asked we simply said we hadn’t seen her. My mother called her the ghost.
I never imagined the horror and destruction that awaited her, how dangerous it was for her to live among men. Laying in the dark cave underneath her bed I could almost hear trouble passing by our door as though the Star Of David hung upon it. She was my roommate’s girlfriend and she was waiting for the ring to be slid upon her finger. Any day now, she said. And so she waited in a cramped little room in a small marshland lagoon near Santa Barbara.
Walking down the streets of Isla Vista on a breezy Spring afternoon was like sliding on the seat of one’s pants down a twisting chocolate syrup slathered slide into a pool of heated Kool-Aid. The sun’s incorruptible optimism warmed the air to an almost artificial perfection. One always felt like they were part of a strange NASA experiment – living in a cavernous room with clouds and blue skies painted on the ceiling, frothy ocean expanses and foggy mountain peaks painted on the walls, climate controlled air being pumped in through hidden vents. There was something about that air – a little too thick without being moist – that didn’t seem natural at all. Santa Barbara wasn’t just perfection. It was confection.
I always wore a black leather duster that came down to my calves and bright yellow high tops. They clashed dysfunctionally that day with my scholarly green and red silk shirt, soaked in sweat, and my black Riches slacks. As I walked home from the video store holding a stretched plastic bag containing six movies, most of them westerns, I looked in through the open doorway of Aloha Bob’s Video Arcade at the tall, jockey boys in their backward baseball caps and white sweaters slamming with their full bodies into the black video game boxes. Matching wits, hotly competitive, they wailed on the buttons until they grew sores on their fingers. They played as though for the honor of a woman’s hand or a treasure chest of precious stones. When they lost they threw up their hands, groaning with mock anguish, struck through the heart. But they put in two more quarters and began again. No number of rematches would ever settle their score but every day they’d come back to try to get the upper hand on their neighbor, to become the social champion.
I stood there staring into the dimly lit concrete room, almost a black hole in the row of shops. Unable to resist I walked into the mouth of the cave, sitting down in the hard plastic seat of a racing game, setting my bag on the dash. I reached into my jacket pocket, coming out with a handful of cracker dust, crumpled one-dollar bills, fast food receipts and an assortment of pennies and foreign coins. Picking through the mess I found two tokens and stuffed the rest back in my pocket.
I chose a red convertible and drove it through the Mojavi desert – swooshing through the dust, rounding the canyon’s rocky fingers, trying to hit the coyote darting across the road. My car perfectly handled the bumps of the trail, crashing into an ocean of blue and driving underwater. I finished fourth – I always finished fourth – and wondered whether it was somehow built into the game, whether one was predisposed to finish one spot out of the winner’s circle so they’d buy another token and try again.
But resisting the bate for today I took my bag and headed home, down the red clay street past the travel agency and Woodstock’s Pizza. I hiked my leg over the Lincoln log fence at the edge of campus, resting my butt on the splintered wood and hopping over the other side. I continued past the concrete bowl in the center of it all with skaters doing tricks on the handrails. I passed the mini mart with blondes in crop tops drinking red fruit smoothies that had already melted by the time they stopped talking to their classmates and walked outside. I wandered through the cool, shady grove and the baking hot parking lot and up the stairs into Anacapa Hall where no sooner had I gotten through the door than I heard the rumbling of Jimmy Hendrix, a ghost who had no doubt been haunting the dorm for thirty years.
I stopped into the bathroom and unzipped. Behind me, two of the showers were still in use. One of the boys, naked except for a towel, ducked his head out of the white tiled stall to see who’d come into his space.
“Oh, hey Jenkins,” he said, his curiosity satisfied. “Hey, did you hear that Wilt Chamberlain died?”
“The basketball player?” I asked, flushing. “I saw the headline in the paper box. Wasn’t he young?” On the other side of the bathroom a voice echoed from the toilet stall, deep with Hispanic bravado.
“You don’ know who Walt Chamberlain is, Jenka’s? He fucked four thousand women, Jenka’s. More than you could imagine. He fathered hundreds of babies out of wedlock, Jenka’s.”
“Must be complicated to split up the inheritance,” I said. “What with all professional athletes make each kid must get – I don’t know. A million dollars?”
“Come on, Jenkins,” the guy in the shower called. “Show some respect for a legend! You know who scored more points than any other player in the history of basketball don’t you?”
“Michael Jordan?” I asked, deliberately being stupid. I looked into the mirror and wet my long, shaggy blonde hair, pushing it back behind my ears.
“Nope. Wilt Chamberlain,” the shower said. “Don’t you know anything?” I poked at a zit on my forehead before toweling off my face.
“I know many things. Just not about basketball.” I headed for the door. “I’ll see ya guys.”
“You don’ know about basketball – you don’t know about life, mang,” the toilet stall called after me. “That’s the problem with you, Jenk’as. You got your head up your ass.”
I headed down the hallway, looking into the open doors as I passed. The inmates whooped and hollered at me, one of them throwing a football. I barely managed to clutch it between my videos and my chest. I raised my arms like I’d caught a touchdown pass, dancing in the N-Zone. I was quite a sight dancing in my long, dirty coat, waist-strap dragging on the ground behind me.
“Okay, now give it back!” the guy demanded. “Jesus Christ, Jenkins.” I threw it right into his hands. He laughed. “Good boy.” I finally got to my room and opened the door, holding my breath in anticipation of the humid, unaired dirty laundry smell. Our room was perpetually coated in some invisible stink dust and no matter how my roommate might keep the window open or the desk fan blowing my laundry continued to contaminate the air.
I stopped in my tracks, surveying a very different room than I’d expected. My bed covers were pulled smooth over the pillows, my desk was well organized, papers filed away, pencils in the jar and my cloths were washed and folded neatly on my dresser. The air smelled only of the ocean outside. Our room looked incredible – someplace I’d want to stay all afternoon.
“What happened?” I asked. “This looks amazing!”
“Yeah,” John said, laughing. “Christine decided to do a little cleaning up.”
“I should say she did,” I exclaimed, standing over my desk trying to figure out where everything was. Christine, laying on John’s bed reading a novel, stuck her thumb between the pages and climbed down to welcome me.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, a little worried. “I did the laundry that was on the floor. Your shirts and pants are ontop of the dresser because I couldn’t find any hangers in your things. I put all of your filmmaking papers together in a plastic bag in your upper left desk drawer, your school papers in one of John’s old folders in your center desk drawer. Please don’t be mad I went through your things. I was bored and I had to clean. Besides, you can’t be mad at me. I brought you and John ice cream from work. I didn’t know what you’d want so I brought you some rocky road, cookie dough and some cherry. You and John can figure out what’s what.” I put my hand on her shoulder and smiled at her.
“You are incredible. John, may I again compliment your taste in women?” I opened the fridge and found three, plain white pint size cartons from Baskin Robins. She got it for free all the time, whatever was left over at the end of the workday. Taking off my moldy leather duster I almost dumped it on the closet floor before stopping myself. I looked awkwardly for someplace to put it. “Could I borrow one of your hangers?”
“Go ahead,” he said, shrugging slightly. I was burning up. The duster was way too hot for the weather. I only wore it out of stubbornness, refusing to sacrifice my east coast fashion sense for something more conventionally Californian – anything to avoid fitting in with those guys. After hanging up my coat I dug into the ice cream, eating rocky road from the container. My whole body was cooling off, red shoulders turning peach. John got up from his computer, adjusting his glasses and stretching.
“I’ve got to go to work,” he said, pulling off his twistem and cupping his long, split-end ridden blonde hair before refastening it. “You and Christine can stay here and – well, whatever.” I looked at him admiringly but he didn’t return my gaze. He didn’t notice. He pulled on his old brown hiking shoes, lacing them up by the mirror. “Alright, seeya later then,” he said, and walked out the door. I looked at Christine, standing by the open window in her gold and brown angora sweater looking out at the Frisbee players. Her long brown hair glowed in the sunshine.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” she asked. “C’mone! What did you get? I wanna see!” She took the videos from me and spilled them across my bed. She gasped, holding her hand to her mouth. She turned to look at me with disbelief. “Breakfast At Tiffanies? I love Breakfast At Tiffanies! Oh my God. I love you!” She hugged me. “Eww. No offense but you’re all sweaty and you really smell. You should take a shower and then we should definitely watch Breakfast At Tiffanies.” I considered telling her about my class in an hour but I knew John would be back not long after it was over and we’d never be able to watch the movie then. So I grabbed my freshly washed towel and headed outside.
In the hall I ran into Little Steve, who was carrying a glossy Christina Aguilera poster and trying very hard not to twist or crinkle it. The smooth grooves of “Californication” oozed from his room and I could see his roommate Gorran sitting on the top bunk smoking a joint.
“You might want to close the door,” I called. “If Big Steve walks by and sees you with that he’s gonna write you up.”
“Big Steve’s not gonna do shit,” his roommate called back. “He doesn’t care. Shut your goody-two shoes mouth, you fucking fagot.” Gorran, a freakishly tall, acme ridden Bulgarian basketball player, offended me more than he scared me. But he scared me a little too.
“Well I don’t care if you smoke,” I insisted. “That’s your business. I was just trying to help.”
“Go help somebody who needs it. I’m gonna carve you up, fagot,” he said, blowing smoke at me, trying to look like Scarface. Little Steve, holding his poster, turned to shut Gorran out of the conversation.
“Hey, is Christine home?” he asked, shrinking even further beneath my stare. “I wanted to tell her something.”
“She’s in our room. She and I were going to watch a movie. Dude, she and I stayed up all last night working on a paper for my Psychoanalysis Of The Horror Movie class. I was so tired but she sang to me to keep me awake and she gave me all of these incredible suggestions and – oh man, it was awesome. She did a super proof read.” He snickered.
“She’s a cool girl,” he said. “You – uhh – in love with her or something?”
“Not at all,” I said, a little angry. “She’s with John.”
“That’s not what I asked,” he said. “Hey, I’m just say’n. Singing? Some people could take that stuff the wrong way. You might want to watch how you talk about her.”
“Thanks for looking out for me,” I said, just to show I was big enough to take advice.
When I came back from taking a shower I walked in wearing nothing but the towel to find Little Steve sitting on my bed talking to Christine. He and I exchanged intensely annoyed glances. We were like starving dogs standing over a trash can.
“Hey Henry,” he said, “Could you go out into the hall for a few minutes? I kinda wanted to talk to Christine alone.” I went over to my closet ignoring him and stood behind the desk. I took a fresh pair of boxer shorts and, looking over my shoulder, saw that he was staring silently at me waiting for me to leave.
“Dude, I’m fucking naked. I’m not going out into the hall.” He gave Christine a knowing look expecting one in return but she just picked at her sneaker.
“Do you want to go into the study lounge?” he asked.
“We’ll be right back,” she promised. Then whispered, “Little Steve’s got a sexual disfunction he needs to talk to me about.”
Ten minutes later I was sitting on the bed reading Entertainment Weekly when there was a bang on the door. I opened it to find Gorran waiting like Frankenstein’s monster, his head almost bumping against the doorframe.
“Hey, where’s the show?” he asked. “Little Steve said you was gonna be in here fucking Christine.”
“You missed it!” I said. “Geez, all the guys were here. We had a keg. Someone brought a camera.” I put one hand on the door and the other on the wall, a human deadbolt. “What can I do for you, Gorran?”
“I just wondered if your laundry had turned up. That was an awful lot of laundry to just walk off. A couple hundred dollars worth?” I shook my head, knowing full well where the laundry had gone.
“Nope, no sign of it. Have you heard anything?”
“Not me, Jenkins!” he said. “Hey, I noticed your CDs were in the dumpster outside. If you don’t want them, Jenkins, I know someone who does.” I looked at my CD player. There were no CDs sitting around it but I wondered whether Christine had just put them away.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’d throw CDs away,” I said. “But if I ever want to I’ll be sure to let you know.” Christine walked back over, finding herself locked out by Gorran’s enormous doorstop of a leg.
“Hey, could I get by?” she asked. We both moved so she could slide by. But he moved back so he squeezed her against the door.
“Shithead,” I shouted. “Chris, where did you put my CDs?” She looked over at the CD player. We both looked at Gorran.
“I’ll seeya later, Jenkins,” he said smirking. Christine walked after him.
“Where are Henry’s CDs?” she demanded. “Hey, Gorran. Woohoo. I’m talking to you. Tell me where his CDs are.”
“I don’t got um,” he said. “They’re in the dumpster.”
“Why don’t you and your friends go get um?” she asked, hands on her hips. I stood next to her saying nothing. He just laughed and walked off.
“Jenkins got girls fighting his battles for him!” he yelled, voice echoing down the hall.
“You’d better go get them,” she said.
“God damn it,” I said, kicking the door. “What the fuck is wrong with these people? Don’t they have any fucking souls? How the fuck did they get in here anyway?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I put your CDs up a couple of hours ago and they were all there. I went to lunch but John was here.”
“Do you think he let them in?” I asked. She gave me a skeptical look.
“Why would he do that? He hates them!” she assured me.
I came back from dinner to find the door unlocked. Inside the lights were out and only the last rays of sun poured in through the window. Christine lay alone in bed, clutching the pillow to her face. She wore nothing but cotton underwear, the sides of her bare breasts squeezed into the comforter. I stopped dead and considered going to the library and pretending I’d never come home. But my back ached and I was hot and sweaty so I took off my duster, threw it over the chair and walked closer, standing now over her voluptuous body. She was beautiful – not nearly as skinny as most of the Santa Barbara girls but womanly. I slid into my bed – a dark cave underneath her and John’s with their comforter hanging down to block out the light. I lay my head on the pillow and when I closed my eyes I could still see her. I smiled sweetly, pressing my warm genitals into the bed and stretching. I fell asleep in less than a minute.
When I came home one day I found a picture drawn in permanent black ink on my door – three naked bodies intertwined. Around it was written every conceivable sexual obscenity. It was worse than the cartoons drawn in the bathroom stalls. I filled up an old orange Halloween bucket and tried to wipe it off with paper towels. But it didn’t even smudge. Big Steve opened on the third nock.
“Whughtt?” he shouted. “I’m watching the Lakers game.” He pushed his waxy yellow hearing aid into the crook of his ear. Big Steve was almost deaf. But the hollow echo of his California accent covered up for his flat voice. You almost wouldn’t have known.
“Did you see what people did to our door?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It sucks. I’ll have to talk to them. That stuff costs the dorm money.”
“Yeah, it also makes me uncomfortable,” I added.
“Yeah,” he said. “Do you want to come in and watch the game?”
“Naw,” I said. “I’m gonna go take a nap.”
I lay in bed flipping through a sports magazine until my eyelids grew heavy, my breath thin and I turned away from the computer. I didn’t dream.
“I could just grab them by the neck,” Christine shouted. “I really told them off. They were scared, John. Did you see Little Steve? He was like ‘Uh oh!’” I tried to open my eyes but they were crusted shut, the room seemingly black around me. I groaned and turned over in order to show them they’d woken me up.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she whispered, covering her mouth. “John, we should talk outside.”
“No,” I moaned. “I tried to scrub that stuff off the door. But it wouldn’t come.”
“Did you just miss the huge scene in the hall? We were shouting. Everyone in the hall could hear us but you.” I’d always been a deep sleeper. I’d once stayed motionless through a fire alarm until my mother, hysterical, shook me awake and told me I needed to see a doctor before I got myself killed.
“You yelled at him about the door?”
“No,” she said. “John let me use the boy’s shower so I wouldn’t have to walk to the other end of the building to use the girl’s. Well while I was in there Gorran pulled open the shower curtain and there I was naked. So I pulled it back and yelled at him and he went away.”
“Good,” I said, a little creeped out. “Shit.”
“He came back a few minutes later with two other guys and pulled it open again. I was really ready to let him have it. But he was standing there blocking the door and his friend had a video camera.”
“Get out of the way,” I said. “I’m going down there right now. I don’t care if they kick me out of the dorm. I’m gonna beat his fucking face in.” I’d never been in a fist-fight in my life and until then never wanted to. I didn’t really think I could take him. But just so long as I got the first couple of shots in I didn’t care.
“No I already took care of it,” she said. “You should have heard me talk to them. And then when they left I got dressed and John and I went looking. He wasn’t answering his door. But we heard my voice coming from one of the rooms. Well John nocks on the door and you should have seen Little Steve’s face. He was begging us not to hurt him. He said there had been all these other guys there and they’d all left and it wasn’t fair to go off on just him and it wasn’t his idea and he didn’t know what was happening until it was over. I really felt sorry for him.”
“All these other guys?” I asked.
“Yeah,” John said. “Apparently they pulled in like ten guys by the time we got there.”
“Where were you?” I asked.
“I wasn’t invited! I was in here with you.”
“So that’s all you did?” I asked. “Yell at them? We need to call the police.”
“Hey,” he said. “It’s my girlfriend. If anyone should be upset it’s me.”
“No, John, if anyone should be upset it’s Christine. But anyone with a soul should be upset so I can’t imagine why you aren’t.”
“It’s over,” he said, pulling off his shoes. “What’s it gonna change?”
When Big Steve came to our door in the morning Christine told him what had happened as though she were describing a fender bender, a no-fault incident, barely worth mentioning, no police involvement necessary. I sat at my desk pretending to fill out a survey but I listened intently, my throat constricting with rage. John stood by her side, one hand on the small of her back, holding up the other to wave Big Steve off.
A few minutes later I left to go to the bathroom and found my way to Big Steve’s room. He invited me in and I sat on the bed, fiddling with his 1950’s hotel-stolen television remote.
“I’m very concerned about the interactions of two people on the hall,” I said.
“Christine and Gorran,” he stated.
“The victim doesn’t want to press charges. I think The victim’s allowing themself to be intimidated or has been brought up not to assert themself in an aggressive way. The perpetrator has also been harassing me night and day for weeks. Can I seek legal action on both our behalves or do I need the other victim’s help?” He said I should talk to the resident director and not him.
“What if I called the police?” I asked.
“It’s too late,” he said. “You need to call right after the crime’s been committed. Besides, this sort of stuff is usually handled by the campus police.”
“Damn it. I can’t believe the police wouldn’t help.”
“Sorry.”
For weeks I filed thick folders of paperwork and showed up for meeting after meeting. Every door seemed to lead to a new door, every window only leading me deeper into the house. Christine insisted I leave her out of it. John would barely speak to me. The residential director said I was doing the right thing. But as a month passed and the harassment had only gotten worse I wasn’t so sure. I came home one day to find my mattress had disappeared from my room. I skipped classes that day, banging on every door and insisting to look inside. Big Steve just told me if I didn’t create such a disruption and piss everyone off no one would bother me, that I was stupid to keep setting myself up to be made fun of.
When I knocked on Irish Mike’s door I heard three people laughing inside. Irish Mike was so named because he’d once gotten so drunk he’d walked into a neighbor’s room in the middle of the night, dropped his trousers and taken a dump on the guy’s floor. He claims to have believed he was in the bathroom.
I tried to turn the handle but it was locked. I kicked the door as hard as I could, the blast echoing down the hall. I beat it with both fists trying to scare the shit out of the people inside. I charged at the door believing it was possible I could break it down and land it ontop of their desk.
“Get away from the door!” Irish Mike bellowed. “I’ll call the police!”
“I wish you would!” I screamed. “I’ve been meaning to call them about you!”
“Back off!” he yelled back, voice ragged.
“Give me my fucking bed!”
“I don’t have it!” he cried. “I don’t know who does! I don’t even know what you’re talking about!”
“Liar!” I screamed, kicking it again and again. Finally he opened the door covering his face with both hands. He shoved the mattress, which was blocking the entire middle of his room, into my face.
“You fucking psychopath!” I grabbed it and ripped it into the hall as he slammed the door behind him and blocked it with his body. Satisfied I walked away. I told the resident director about the incident and she just said to write up a second report.
Sitting in the concrete bowl underneath Stork Tower I rested my head on my knees, closed my eyes and imagined how my life would be different if I left. I’d move to Iowa. I could sit outside all day in nature writing poetry and at night I could take virginal country girls for walks in the cornfields. They’d be fascinated by my stories, leading such simple lives themselves and my real world ambition would make me seem exciting. I could see the corn in my mind, the saddle smooth sky behind it. People kept walking past, blondes with cell phones, laughing as though they’d heard the funniest joke in the world. The images grew fuzzier. I murmured Simon and Garfunkle songs to block them out, garbling the lyrics.
“Cloudy, the sky is gray and white and cloudy. Sometimes I think it’s hanging down on me. Oh to hitchhike a thousand miles for a finger painted smile. Got some pictures in my pocket and a lot of time to kill. Hey sunshine. I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
I kept wondering if this was all my fault. If I didn’t exist at all would they still have hurt Christine? Did I provoke them? Those guys were crazy. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t make them do it. But had I broken the cardinal rule by spitting in a crazy person’s eye? Was I making things worse by dragging her name through the judicial process? What if I didn’t and Gorran hurt someone else? How could I live with myself? But what if I did and I lost the only friend I had?
Gorran wasn’t going anywhere. I was sure of that. I needed to leave the dorm, to stop feeding the animals, to let Christine survive how she chose. I wanted to transfer someplace I belonged.
“I wish I was homeward bound. Home where my thoughts escaping, home where my music’s waiting, home where my love life’s waiting silently for me.”
But six days later it was Christine who was headed home. Just the night before we’d been baking cookies for John and talking about my crush from the film co-op and I’d felt as safe as I had for a long time. But by two o’clock the next afternoon we were on the bus headed down the California freeway, past the marsh and the palm trees and the ocean on our way to the distant train station near the Baskin Robbins where she worked. John really wanted time alone with her and he grew impatient as I wouldn’t stop talking.
We went to a Baskin Robbins – not hers but one a quarter of a mile down from it. There were just twenty minutes until her train left. I looked across the table at her, almost in tears.
“What did you order?” she asked, confused.
“An ice cream sundae,” I said, trying to tear open a plastic packet of fudge topping with my teeth.
“That’s not an ice cream sundae,” she said. “Go talk to them.”
“Forget it, it doesn’t matter.”
“You pay these rates and you don’t think it matters if you get the right product?” She stared at me in disbelief. I was a lot more casual about spending money than she was. For her this was the biggest splurge of her week. For me it was just a distraction. I got up and asked at the counter for hot fudge and they told me they didn’t have any. Angry, she walked over and stood next to me.
“That’s not a sundae,” she said. “That’s two scoops of ice cream and cold fudge. Give him a dollar back.”
“Woah chill out,” the guy said. “I’m sorry but I can’t do that.” She insisted he could.
“If you need me to operate the cash register I’ll show you how to void a purchase.” I stood there quietly holding my hand over my mouth to hide my smile. Was she really defending me over ice cream?
“It’s okay,” I said, playing the woman. “Really. Let’s go eat.”
“Why don’t you heat it up,” she said. “The microwave.”
“Fuck you,” the guy said and threw the packets in the microwave. He brought them back so hot they almost burned my fingers. We sat down to our ice cream, which had already half-way melted in the California sun.
A few minutes later as I watched her train pull away I doubted I’d ever see her again. But more importantly I wondered whether John would. And gravest of all whether it was my fault.
“Do you want to take the bus?” I asked him.
“Don’t even talk to me,” he said. “I’m going to try to move out too. I guess I’ll see you back at the room.” He turned away from me and walked. I think he would have walked into the street even if the light weren’t red.
I moved out first. I found a nice, private room in a middle aged lawyer’s house in a Spanish section of downtown. When I walked out at night I was surrounded by a spade of glowing Mexican restaurants, bookstores, fountains, churches and street saxophonists. The woman I lived with had a big blind sheep dog named Herculese who slept in my room. I came back to see John once and ended up helping him pack the rest of Christine’s belongings, wishing I could have her vomit colored sweater to remember her by. But I didn’t dare ask.
Somehow once I left it was nicer to visit the campus, to look at the beautiful women and clown around with the guys. Then I could leave whenever I wanted. For the first time I started to enjoy college, focusing in on film school, doing my homework. But I couldn’t help but feel like the university had let me down. I’d still run into Gorran in the halls and he’d still give me a hard time. No amount of paperwork had taught him anything. I left the university suddenly one day, just like that. I got a great student fare, picked up my bag and took the bus through the marshlands and sky blue apartment buildings, burrito restaurants and sunbathers. I stopped by the dorm to tell whoever was skipping class I’d gotten my reprieve from this prison of ours. Big Steve told me I wouldn’t be missed, that he’d never liked me and never wanted to see me again. Little Steve gave me his email address. The others guys weren’t home. I got on a plane by sundown. I’d file the paperwork long distance.
Two months later I got a phone call from the resident director. A professor had been receiving anonymous emails threatening her with physical and sexual violence, even death. The night before a campus police officer happened to be passing by a parking lot on his nightly patrol when he saw a tall, shadowy figure approach the professor on her way to her car. The figure grabbed her and held her against the door. She screamed for help and the police officer ran to help her. Gorran had been expelled. He’d lost his visa and returned to Bulgaria. She said she just wanted to thank me for the information I’d provided that Winter. She said my reports had finally been put to good use. When I hung up the phone I laughed until I cried.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, April 19th, 2001
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1:55 pm
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Why are there no good places on campus to do homework on the computer? Downstairs in the Academic Center people are talking. Downstairs in the Marvin Center people are screaming! Finally I go to the library and it's jumping with chatting valley girls and "Oh my God! He's so cutes!" and cell phones going off and everything too. These girls aren't even sitting at computers. They are just standing in the middle of the room drinking soda and giggling about some fucking boy and if they'd just walk five feet out the door I could do my homework. I just can't write poetry over all of this. I'm not that good at blocking people out. And they just laugh and laugh completely uncontrolably until they bang into the walls and I think they're going to piss their pants. I don't understand that either. I laugh often. I'm one of the most playful people you'll ever meet. But I just don't lose control like that, much less in a public work environment. I glare at them but they won't go away. I think about asking but it just makes me mad. I shouldn't have to ask. They should let me work in a work area. I just want a place I can study......
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, March 8th, 2001
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2:29 am - Just a cheesy love poem
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Sometimes You Can Go Home Again
By Henry Jenkins
For eight months I was locked in hell
With only a travel agent to set me free.
My skin was burned and
My heart withered away to a smelted ash.
Ignorance and stupidity were my fire,
Macho gunfire beach stormers my demons,
Ocean washed blondes the damned.
All the while I tried to escape,
To return to the overworld where I belonged.
But a brooding hacker man in a tight black shirt
Had become tangled in the web as well
And I mourned as much for his crackling mind as my own.
He saw me sitting in the blackened corner of my dorm room
Wearing glasses to shield my eyes from the sun.
He led me to a deserted computer room
Where he had salvaged a silver filtered water canister
That he would give me half of.
He didn’t complain when I took more than half.
Using his superprocessor, like a periscope to the living,
I read beautiful words of ‘library open,’
‘film festival submissions,’ and ‘Why I Plan to Wait.’
I wept for Julia Roberts toothpaste smile.
These relics, like children’s picture books of the Apocalypse,
Were our bond, our stone suits in the fire.
In his room we watched together, mournfully,
as the books burned outside his window
and Los Angeles sunk into the Ocean.
When I boarded a cast iron airplane out
Past the blackened gristle skulls
And rotting muscle balls
I completed my sentence.
Hell had not been eternal, but only a school year long detention.
The hacker waved goodbye.
I turned and watched for as long as I could
Until he had been completely immersed in the fire.
Sitting in an ice cream shop
Outside a snowy Eastern college
I looked out at the Radio Shack across the street
He was still sitting there, in front of his superprocessor,
Reading about Nietzche.
My friends didn’t understand why I wanted to go back.
They hugged me with folded arms.
“Don’t cling to a drowning man,” they said,
“Or he’ll struggle and push you down.”
I tied a bull rope around my stomach
And begged “Pull on this cord if I don’t return
And reel our bodies home.”
I boarded America West flight 666
With a transfer in Las Vegas
Where Cerebus tempted me with golden coins
And cheap women wanted me for my idealism.
They were just lonely fallen angels
Struggling to pay their way through purgatory.
I paid them but refused to enjoy their carrion.
I slept on the flight through darkness.
The Hacker was buried in a shallow grave
And barely seemed to recognize me.
His eyes were black and grotesque,
His hands slashed and red with the blood
Of giving up.
Horrified, I saw his computer on the floor.
“Jenkins,” he called to me. “Jenkins, how are you?”
I laid a copy of Salinger before him
And he smeared black blood on its pages
Trying to grasp them.
”Is Heaven fun?” he asked me. “Did you see Julia Roberts?”
I told him but when he reached out his flaking hand
I pulled away from him.
He had been changed.
“I love it here,” he told me.
“I’ve found others who are like me.”
He pointed. Creepy crawlies made a
Sticky brown trail to their twisted nude bodies,
Fingers and toes like stretched Bit-O-Honey.
They were freaks – all of them,
With long twisted beards and ripples of bulging fat,
Women with shaved heads and mismatched cloths.
One of them looked to the sky, a blank look on her face,
Reciting an old poem.
Outside I could hear the hell lords
Pounding their surf boards against the door.
“The superprocessor?” I asked him.
“What happened to it?”
”One of the Swedish guys got to it while I was at class,”
he said, “They told me it was a prank.”
I cried. It was so wrong.
“I don’t need computers to see the outside world,”
he told me. “There are people here, around me.
They are what I was longing for. Not soil.
They were here all along. You just needed to look…”
“Your burning in hell,” I told him.
“You all are. You could be free, together, outside.”
But he did not take my hand.
“I am in my own Heaven,” he told me. “They can
steal from me, burn my books, slam me against the walls.
But as long as I retain knowledge and beauty within me
they can never damn any of us.”
I believed that he had gone completely insane
And as his head fell from his shoulders
I cried for him again because I had seen the outside,
The coffee houses, the guest lectures
Where he could be whole again and free from danger,
Where he could share my heaven.
But I left him there to rot in my hell
Someplace where I could not hold him
And kiss him softly.
I ran from his dorm through the
Matchbox fields
And the demons of my past began to chase me.
“Jenkins,” they yelled. “Whassup?”
“Your imbeciles,” I told them.
“Your shallow and stupid and you’ll never get anywhere.”
They continued to follow me, in convertibles now.
“Come smoke some pot, Jerkins! Ride with us, dude!
We’ll go check out some hot chicks! Dude, there’s
This girl who’s been talking about you all night…”
I just said “No,”
And felt the rope tug at my chest
To take me away to someplace cool
Where there were beautiful angels in subway cars
Waiting to pick my brain about comic strips and cave drawings
And classes on English literature taught at obscure hours of the day and night.
I made good friends and tried to move on with my life,
Tried to satisfy myself that the Hacker would live his.
For months every time I looked in the mirror
I would see his blistered face smiling back at me
And ache to hold him.
But I never returned to hell.
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(comment on this)
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| Wednesday, February 28th, 2001
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2:27 pm - Bite Me
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Welcome to the Hellmouth
By Henry Jenkins
In junior high school they all called me Piggy Williams
Because I was the fattest kid on hands on knees.
I was no good at sports.
Only kickball,
Which wasn’t really a sport at all
But a game
With a pitchers mound.
One time they poured milk on my Salisbury steak
And told me to lick it.
Jennifer Mendonca told me she’d give me sex if I did it.
I thought she was just horny.
But I wouldn’t lick it even so.
It felt awful.
I wanted sex.
One time Jason with the red hair
Kicked me in the balls.
He said I was a fat, ugly fuck
And a stupid pig fucker.
I turned around and
Whacked him in the teeth.
I got sent home
Where I ate peanut butter from the jar
And felt sorry for myself
And jerked off to fantasies of sex
With Kelly Kapowski from TV.
Like that was going to happen.
One day the vampires came, though,
And bit all of those monsters.
It was horrible watching Jason die
While he wet himself and shook like a twig.
But the vampires didn’t bite me.
They offered to make me one of their clique.
All I had to do was make a hole in their neck
And lick it.
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, February 26th, 2001
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8:11 pm - My latest
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I Never Liked NASCAR
by Henry Jenkins
I never liked NASCAR
with it's dizzying swirls of anonymous red and green racecars
it's excrutiating 'Vroom! Vroom! Vroom!' sound
man-childs in technicolor playsuits
praising God in buttermilk thick North Carolina accents
the same trite messages over and over again.
I never liked the shameless product placement --
Peter Pan Peanut Butter cars at the Pepsi 500.
I don't know when the commercials end and the race begins.
I never liked the prohibiting morning start times
that would make it impossible for me, as a student,
to watch even the biggest events.
I never liked the obscure cable channels...
So why did I feel so sad when Dale Earnhardt passed on?
Why did I feel the need to watch the funeral of a man
I never liked, or watched or even thought about?
Why do I still read articles about his tragedy
a week after there was no longer anything to report?
And why did I tell everybody I knew how awful it was
when they had even less tollerence for the races than I did?
Why should he matter to me?
Was it simply the shock value?
Famous person dies in grotesque fashion on LIVE TV?
Am I drawn to violence and tragedy
and is my sadness actually a sickness?
No. It is not excitement I feel.
It is envy.
For you see, as tragic as Mistern Earnhardt's death was
there's no escaping the self-centered fantasy of circumstance.
While others die in hospital beds,
feet dangling into their bed pans,
nurses gone away to watch Rosie,
he died surrounded by friends.
Everyone he had ever loved or hated or envied himself
was watching as he won the biggest prize in the game
and crossed through the white tape of victory
with no time to mess it all up again.
His death was not printed in a shredded up obituary section,
soiled on the bottom of a guinni pigs cage.
It made the front page of every Times and Badger-Herald.
He was a poster child for the dearly departed,
no longer just a superstar but a legend.
Somewhere in St. Petersburg or Charolette or Daytona
cement trucks will soon begin pouring a
black asphalt ring around a grassy turf
where girls who love sports
will cheer on men with waxy mustaches
doing what he always loved to do.
His likeness will stand out front,
a reminder to them that he once mastered
what they are only beginning to learn.
Victorious over the common driver at last.
I wish I could die reading my great American novel
to a room full of aspiring writers
and they would carry my body through the stacks
past Salinger, Melville and Twain
looking only at me, wishing only for one more word,
one more witty chapter.
I wish they'd cry on my pages
and write themselves of my death
and how it saddened them.
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, February 19th, 2001
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7:25 pm - Part two of Lonesome
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The Ballad of Jasmine Greene
Jasmine grew up hating school. Her parents moved her from neighborhood to neighborhood but it never seemed to do any good. Wherever she went there was tension, anxiety, gloominess. There were always threats to her safety and happiness, kids who wanted to bully her. The kids her age always seemed so moody and volatile. The moment she did something wrong they abandoned her, wouldn’t talk to her anymore. Sometimes it seemed like she’d done something wrong simply by talking to them, coming near them. She became afraid of the other kids. She learned not to trust them. And so she practiced the only pastime that made her happy – dance.
When she was in first and second grade her mother would play game with her. She’d lie on the floor, bend her arms and legs and Jasmine would copy her. She’d pretend to be a bear and they’d stomp across the rug together, sniffing, growling. She’d pretend to be a kangaroo and they would bounce. Cleo knew nothing about dance. She couldn’t teach her daughter the propper exercises to help her develop a style. But she loved to see her daughter smile so she did what she could.
They went to the public library in the city together and read up on techniques. They tried to follow the illustrations – to crawl, slither, roll. It came naturally to Jasmine. She was such a fast learner and she never got tired.
She was always lonely, though, and morbid. Peter blamed it on his wife and, in turn, she blamed it on the television. But Jasmine seemed absolutely convinced that her parents were going to die and leave her. Not someday, but soon and forever. She never wanted to leave her parents home, even when she grew up. She didn’t trust anyone else like she trusted her mother. She didn’t know anyone else she wanted to dance with. Two or three times in the fourth grade she began to question her parents at dinner.
“What would you do if Peter were going to die tomorrow and there was no way to stop it,” she asked. “What if he drank poison and he was slowly dying? What would you do together?” Sometimes she question her father instead.
“What if the world were ending?” she’d ask him. “What then?”
Frightened, her parents would always look to each other and search for the right answer.
“I would ask her to tell me where all her writings were kept,” he might offer. “So that her visions wouldn’t be lost when she was gone.” Jasmine would always break down at this and cry. She’d cry so hard her ribs would hurt and her food would be wet with tears.
“You wouldn’t fly to London or Paris or go hanggliding or anything? You’d just want to know where her stupid book is? Don’t you know?” And then she’d run to her bed and hide under the covers until morning came. She couldn’t face them until then.
To be continued...
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(comment on this)
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12:05 am
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I just got to the chapter twelve "twist" of
Ender's Game. This book never ceases to amaze
me. I can't put it down. Every five pages I
cover my mouth, stare out the window and say "Oh my God!!!" I don't read as much as I should. I've never been good at it. Sometimes I try and everything gets in the way. I get work, my social life turns upside down, I get into a writing mood and before you know it I've lost the book and the will to read it. It deeply frustrates me as an intellectual because reading is such an important way to learn and develop. Every now and then, though, I'll start reading a book that's good enough I'm not able to put it down. That seems (for the moment) more important than classes, TV or anything else. Books like that make me feel so good about myself. I'm lucky too. It came at a pretty good time. :) Why can't there be more books like this?
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(comment on this)
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| Sunday, February 18th, 2001
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2:25 am - One of the Jasmine stories
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For Nikki, who loved and listened when other's couldn't;
I made up this story in my head months ago and never wrote
it down. It's remained perfectly intact in my memory ever since. I thought, perhaps, you'd understand.
Lonesome
By Henry Jenkins
Somewhere outside of New Orleans in the 1950’s there lived a gypsy. We’ll call her Cleo. She lived in an abandoned, rusted over boxcar by the side of the highway and had a sign out front promising “Fortunes – One Dollar.” All day long she would sit inside in the dimmest of lights reading dusty old novels and listening to the cars pass by on the road. She got very few customers. When she got a customer, she knew about it. If a car made the slightest hesitation as it passed by, if it slowed down to avoid a skunk she could feel it in her blood. She had very strong senses.
One day a man stopped on the side of the road and got out to have a look. He was a few years older than her, not the most attractive man but warm and bright. From the moment he timidly climbed on board the train and peered through her window she had a good feeling about him. He took a seat opposite her brown wicker chair and pulled a dollar from his pocket.
“My name is Peter Greene,” he explained, “and I would like my fortune told.”
He asked her why she didn’t have a magic ball and she told him that a true psychic didn’t need one. She took his hand and stoked it gently, staring deep into his eyes. He blushed deeply but he didn’t pull away. He could feel her staring right through him, inside of him even and he grew warm inside as though drinking from a thermos of steaming tomato soup. It was intensely pleasurable but alien to him. She was touching him someplace new.
“You’re a very lucky man,” she said at last. He looked at her, pleased, and asked what she saw in store for him. “Your going to fall in love soon,” she told him. And smiled. And smiled.
Two weeks later they were married in a creepy old church in the French district. No one came but the service was more than beautiful enough for both of them. They did not rent an expensive hotel room to make love in, nor did they spend their first night in a new apartment. They just went back to the boxcar by the side of the highway and made love in the darkness where they’d met.
Cleo got pregnant in the Fall and Peter got a job as a bus boy to support her. He carried glasses on plastic trays during the day to bring her baskets of wild fruit at night. For her part, whenever anyone would stop outside the rusted boxcar she would read their fortune and tell them what lay in store for them in the future. Sometimes the news was good, other times more worrisome. But she always told them the truth, the world as it was and would be.
No one ever believed her, of course, and by law she was required to leave a sign in her window explaining the readings were “For entertainment purposes only.” But sooner or later they would all come back sometimes from as far as two states away. She was good at her job.
The baby was born in July, when the Southern heat would turn the green rusted metal of the boxcar scalding hot and the little apartment would fume in the darkness. It was the middle of the night and Peter barely woke up enough to drive her to the hospital. It was a girl and she looked just like her mother. They gave her a gypsy name – Jasmine, like the scent. She was beautiful and she was a perfect mix of both of them. She had her mother’s eyes and her father’s smile.
Jasmine smiled a lot as a baby. She contrasted her mother, who never smiled at very much. She was always reaching out for people, trying to grab them and pull. Peter was delighted to have such a well-adjusted child. She seemed to bring out the best in the both.
They were a loving family, always together even in times of stress. The Summer she turned five, right before she started school Jasmine’s parents took her to Disneyworld. Cinderalla’s castle was her favorite, even though it wasn’t a ride or a show. She just seemed like she wanted to live there. That was the last time she ever laughed like that for a while.
The first day of kindergarten was rough. From the time she got up in the morning Jasmine didn’t want to go. She was afraid, as though her parents were abandoning her, handing her over to some cackling with who would enslave her and make her do terrible evils. She drug her feet along the ground and the ankle of her jeans ripped on a branch as Cleo dragged her up the steps. Her teacher, Miss Kotkey, welcomed them at the door and in moments Jasmine was truly on her own for the first time.
They went around the room and introduced themselves, told where they were from and picked out a favorite color. Jasmine chose gray as an act of rebellion. She didn’t feel like saying pink or white. She wanted to go home. But, ever obliging, Miss Kotkey gave her a steel blue piece of construction paper that kind of looked gray to write her name on and hang above her cubby. She would see it twice a day for the whole year. The gray kind of stuck.
The kids were really fussy that day. None of them seemed to want to be there. Kids pulled on and off their shoes and beat them on the floor. They wandered disobediently over to the corners and refused to look at the Work Stations. Miss Kotkey was not pleased and, all of a sudden, she lost her temper. She scolded the children in a fit of rage and told them they would need to be more cooperative if they were going to get by in her class. Miss Kotkey seemed very shocked by her own outburst and left the children with a friend while she went to the faculty room for a cup of coffee. She couldn’t understand how she’d let her temper get so out of control. But even after everyone else had grown up and forgotten, she remembered. It was one of the worst things she ever said to a bunch of kindergarteners.
If there was something funky in the air on the first day it was definitely a sign of what was to come. Jasmine came home every night upset that her teacher didn’t accept her and became so ridden with anxiety that she began wetting the bed. Every morning she’d wake up and her cot would be cold and wet. She’d wash herself off and it would be time for school again, time to give herself over to the witch.
To be continued…
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(comment on this)
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| Wednesday, February 14th, 2001
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5:31 pm - Seth Inspired Me
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Support System
By Henry Jenkins
From where I stand every intimate relationship is like a house of cards
two people slowly build up, deck after deck, until it’s a castle.
The first deck is The Deck of Friendship,
on which all lasting relationships are founded.
Decks may rise and decks may fall
but as long as you remain grounded in friendship
your table will never be bare.
The second deck is The Deck of Trust,
the center of everything,
the deck which must be built and rebuilt
until, with practice and balance, it stands
and it’s strength can be trusted.
The third deck is
The Deck of Sensuality,
which few have the skillful hands
to truly master.
This is the smallest,
least trustworthy deck
but represents everything
that bears it’s weight,
your crowning legacy.
There are higher decks, too, though they are sometimes overlooked.
There are Future decks, rare as the Royal Flush but twice as valuable,
Eternal decks which no one has ever set eyes on
And even a second Friendship deck with regenerative powers unmatched.
You can stomp on this deck and your house will stand.
You can throw it into the wind, blow it up
But it will always find it’s way back.
This is the true master deck.
I once
heard that
some people
were good
enough at cards
to skip the first
two decks.
They say
it’s like
floating
on air.
I tell them
“Just don’t look down.”
Because no one
will be
there to
catch you
when you fall
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, February 6th, 2001
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2:15 pm - Dellimna
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I'm fifteen minutes late for class. You can't enter the classroom except from the front where the professor stands. I don't care about the class but I've missed it a number of times before. Do I stay or do I go? That is the question.
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, February 5th, 2001
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4:58 pm - Tuesday's homework poem (which Seth will take many issues with I'm sure)
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I Wish I Were a Boy, Interrupted
By Henry Jenkins
They told me this would happen
when I started, the course
would make me feel Abnormal
and I would begin to identify
heavily with the
patients.
I certainly hoped so.
I’d always dreamed of being a
sociopath,
Ever since I’d seen Girl,
Interrupted last Spring I’d been jealous,
Susanna got to live in a dorm full of
eccentric people rustling with unexpected viewpoints and
disturbing sexual fantasies,
I had to settle for
Thurston.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter was kinda sexy for a
guy. His voice haunted me in my dreams.
“Henry…” I could hear him
calling “Come here, Henry…
I want to come out of retirement…”
I wanted to ask him about his
Mother.
There’s little I find
quite so seductive
as a good phobia or fetish.
All of my girlfriends are
“fucked.”
They’re all obsessive
and they all have their own anxiety disorders to
feed off of.
The thought of someone stalking me
stealing my underclothes and hiding in the closet
makes me feel
very desired.
Being bound and left to the mercy(lessness)
of a sadistic psychopath
sounds terribly exciting.
I took the class to get high on buspar and Beta Blockers,
to find out what’s wrong with me
and where I might fit into the Belview Social Scene.
I’d never been so disappointed as when I found out
I was just a college boy.
Not even that eccentric.
It’s enough to drive me to depression. . . . .
Do you like scary movies?
I do.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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12:36 am - Men In Tights
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My body is not built for this classroom. I tried to “fall” and I fell right into the lights. Everyone acted very shocked and somebody gasped. I’m sure it was a frightful sight. I just wish no one had noticed. Nicholette says she’s crashed into lights before. But I’m really starting to feel like an oddity in this class. When we were doing our routines in sets of two and three everyone seemed very casual about it, talking quietly by the window, staring at the floor. But when I “came up to bat” everyone watched. Everyone. I wish it were because of my ability but it isn’t. I’m not that good a dancer. I really feel different than the other students and not in a way I like.
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, January 30th, 2001
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6:01 pm - Rough first draft of a new poem
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When my breath smells of sour milk
I want you to hold your nose
And turn me away
So next time I’ll smell minty fresh for you
When I dig my fingers into the gaps
Between your tender ribs
Move my hand
So I can learn to make you breathe with pleasure
When I drop refried beans on my lap
I want you to show me the correct way
To hold a burrito
So I won’t always feel as embarrassed as I do tonight
When I lie to you about the directions to my apartment
So we can walk a little farther together
Refuse to kiss me goodnight
Lying won’t lead us to anyplace good
And when you leave me for someone handsome
Who knows his way around
I’ll try to think of someone new
And how much happier I’ll make her than I ever made you
I’ll try to think of it as a learning experience
Practicing for when I grow up
I’ll try not to feel so abandoned
That I forget all I’ve learned once again
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, January 23rd, 2001
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3:36 pm - K poem
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Playing With My Lover
By Henry Jenkins
Katie sneezed on my peanut butter,
And I ate it,
It tasted a lot like my spit,
Only cooler
I could feel her germs just below my throat,
I pictured them being small, green and red with lots of arms,
Like in Dr. Mario,
They were stuck in the peanut butter
When she blew her nose it made the loudest noise,
Like when the vacuum cleaner tries to suck the carpet sort of,
I wanted to eat her boogers,
But she wouldn’t let me
Katie and I are going to get married,
Our parents say we’re too young,
But I love her,
Else I prolly wouldn’t be wanting her boogers so bad
I saw a terradactile today who reminded me of Katie,
Cause he had a really funny grin,
And he liked toast,
Katie only eats toast
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, January 22nd, 2001
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3:43 pm - For what it's worth: My eighteen cents on last nights Golden Globe presentation
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The Golden Globes last night were a real mixed bag for me. Someone as innocous and meaningless as Sela Ward beating Sarah Michelle Gellar's chance of a lifetime at recognition was very, very dissapointing. It put a black stain on the evening that, I think, permanently depleted from my potential enjoyment. Sela Ward means nothing and is loved by no one. She might as well have been that awards shithead Kelsey Grammer (who wins more awards than Joe Montana made touchdowns but never makes me laugh with his generic, overdrawn, survival of the blandest "humor.") What a waste! The whole evening, in fact, was a real headscratcher. It felt like it had been slapped together in a single afternoon. Rene Zellweggar was in the bathroom? How stupid do you have to be? It was bizzarre that Christine Lahti made that mistake a few years ago. But for Zellweggar to turn around and make the same mistake again? Unconscionable. I don't know who allowed Elizabeth Taylor to go on stage but she really shamed her memory in the minds of younger viewers. Was she too drunk to stand up? Or is she simply losing her mind? Anyone who has ever watched any awards show (and I'd suggest that includes sixty year old movie stars) knows that the envelope contains the name of the winning film. I am overcome with confusion that she had to be helped by Dick Clark in delivering the news of Best Picture. It made the whole show look like a joke. Martin Sheen's speech was funny at points but as I recall also rather odd. A lot of them were. When they had two presenters they inevitably tripped over each other and didn't seem to have discussed who would read each part. Al Pacino spoke very eloquently but appeared as though he hadn't written a speech. These are actors. They make their lives memorizing scripts and speeches. You'd think for a lifetime achievment award he would have tried harder. Some of them seemed to literally have nothing to say. One of the winners (was it Ang Lee?) practically had to throw his wife to the sharks on national television in order to get her to mumble into the microphone. Every person in the show looked like an amature. I couldn't understand how so many multi-millionaire professionals could look so incompetent in a single night.
The two people who really made me happy were perhaps two of the only sober individuals - the inspirationally sweet Julia Roberts and her real life counterpart Erin Brokovich. All humans have an energy about them that's part of their nature. Some energies make you feel good. And some make you feel bad. Usually you have to be in someone's close proximity to feel the energy that surrounds them but Julia's can be transmitted over the airwaves and into one's living room. Her very restrained sense of style (a long sleeved black cotton turtleneck dress) was very bold and provocative in it's modesty. It leads the viewer to believe that she's much too good to have to glitz herself up. She was born with the beauty most actresses try to buy. Her comments were sincere and affectionate. Erin Brokavich seemed like a very bright, warm and humble person -not a lawyer or a dirt sheet celebrity. Unlike some who have their stories made into films (Anne Rice comes to mind,) she seemed grateful and proud. Robert Downey Junior was my other favorite of the night. I really got a feel for who he was and wound up really rooting for him to win the award by the end of it. I didn't know I liked him.
Ang Lee winning best director was a huge surprise (and not, on the whole, a terribly unpleasent one.) Foreign language films are rarely recongized as having great acting primarily because most English speaking viewers don't know what to look for in a foreign performance. I felt refreshed by their historic recognition. Kate Hudson's win for Almost Famous had me riveted. She deserved it entirely and really needed it for her career to take off. I was pleased to see the West Wing carry television again. This was a very important week to be reminded of how happy they are. George Clooney winning Best Actor for Oh Brother Where Art Thou? How strange was that? I'm just surprised he wasn't more stunned and unprepared himself. Of all the films I wouldn't expect to recieve awards recongition the critical whipping boy of the year is chiefly amoung them. Why couldn't Tom Hanks have lost his Best Actor nomination for Forest Gump so I wouldn't feel so bad about rooting for him now? He deserved the award he got. But if he wins at the Oscars he will have recieved TWO more Best Actors than anyone else in the history of film and that seems very unfair. Oh, and how is it that Bob Dylan used to be cool? He was the worst speaker during a night of bad speakers. "Uhh... I don't have much to say. Uhh... That's it I guess." How could someone that worthless lead a generation???
All in all a lot of well placed trophies, one really fucked up decision and a hidious show. The Royal Rumble (also last night) was a lot better. Drew Carrey entered the Rumble and actually made a good run at it. He eliminated two people based on sheer intelligence and managed to last two minutes alone with Kane without being thrown out. He bought someone off. But he eventually eliminated himself after being threatened with a weapon. He made the right choice in picking the Rumble over the Globes. Big time.
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| Wednesday, January 17th, 2001
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4:34 pm - Starving for Art
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Introduction to Dance and Creative Movement - This course will be veeeeery interesting. I knew that from the moment I walked in the door. Boy did I feel conspicous. I so obviously held the only Y chromosom in the room! I wouldn't have guessed my presence would be such a big deal. But I really get the impression it mattered to some people. I'm not sure they want heterosexual men in their dance class. It made me want to go back and watch Remember The Titans again, when the first black students walk into the white Southern high school. "I think your in the wrong place, BOY!" It was kinda funny, really. We did the most interesting assignments. We all had to draw self portraits. Normally this wouldn't be very interesting at all. But in the context of a dance class it took on very heavy meaning. Did you ever see the drawings Omaha, Nebraska did of her and Raven Poe? How their bodies were different even though they were the same person? In the fantasy (as Raven) she had much bigger hips and breasts. Sarah was skinny as a board. No one can really draw accurately and literally what their own body looks like, much less without a mirror. So they just have to draw the way they imagine their body, or the way their body feels. A lot of the drawings showed girls much skinnier than the people who drew them. One girl drew a naked body. It was a very personal exercise and I was both thrilled and concerned that the professor made us show the drawings to the group without having told us before we drew them. It meant I got a great insight into the hearts of the people around me. But I felt personally intruded upon and suspected they might have as well. We also had this exercise where we were supposed to walk around in whatever way suited us. After a few minutes she asked us to stop and remember how we'd been walking. Were we drawn to one side of the room over the other? Did we tend to stay close to certain people? Were we consistent in our patterns, rythems? I was amazed to discover that I did feel more comfortable on one side of the room than the other. But I was hard pressed to explain why. Another exercise had us closing our eyes and trying to sense the people around us. Did some people seem to have more attractive energies than others? I could easily find one girl standing behind me. I'm curious now. Is there a reason she's easier to identify than the others? The entire period was designed to give us a heightened awareness of energy and of the shapes and capacities of our bodies. Afterwards I went out and had a salad. I can already tell why dancers starve themselves...
The slender,
H.
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| Tuesday, January 16th, 2001
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7:48 pm - Vampirism Class
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Vampirism class - Fabulous! I give it rave reviews. The professor is nothing like Rickles. He's totally funny - this skinny man dressed all in black with a long black pony tail and a thick Eastern European accent. I'd swear he was one of the Judge's hench men on Buffy! He's spent his life studying cults and countercultures. He has an archive of garage band death metal in a locked room of the campus library. He intends to spend the first half of the course on Slavic literature and the second half of the course on a history of American Popular Culture. He talked about Buffy, RPGs, Anne Rice novels, Goth nightclubs, lesbianism and various other Academically taboo subjects. The class is full of Goths and punks - both the obvious and a surprising number of the absolutely hidden variety. He went around the room asking us why we took the course and people had amazing answers. "I'm a published vampirism author," "I'm gamemaster for the DC Goth RPG group," "I'm from New Orleans," "I'm from Germany..." I had to laugh at the people who clearly didn't fit in. One guy said he took the course because he's a senior and he thought it would be "fun" and "not very stressful." DUMB FUCK! The readings include Vampires, Burial and Death by Paul Barber, In Search of Dracula by Raymond T. McNally, Piercing the Darkness by Katherine Ramsland, The Penguine Book of Vampire Stories by Alan Ryan. No Anne Rice. The guest lectures include a film professor and a Rabbi who considers himslf an expert in "Demonology (!!!)" Overall this course looks to be the best of the term. I'm very, very excited about it.
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11:07 am - My Dinner with NR!!!!!
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[I pause the movie and go to the bathroom. I come out and NR crosses the room to take my place.]
NR: May I use the bathroom?
Me: Sure.
[She closes the door and I sit nervously on my bed, waiting for her to finish. Thirty seconds later she walks out.]
NR: Is it me or is there no toilet paper?
Me: Uhhh...
NR: It's okay if there isn't. I'm just double checking.
Me: There should be toilet paper. I think. I'm sure. I know I put some in there cause I did it - uhh... right before I left the house for vacation.
NR: Where is it?
Me: Uhhh...
NR: There's no toilet paper.
Me: I thought - Uhhh...
NR: It's okay. I don't need any.
Me: I'm sorry! I feel so awful. Next on my To Do list: Buy toilet paper! Eheheh.
NR: Don't worry about it.
[She goes in and closes the door. I stand outside feeling dumb and trying not to hear.]
Me: I will worry about it. What kind of good host doesn't keep toilet paper?
[She walks out.]
NR: Look, don't worry about it. I didn't have to take a shit. Can I put the movie back on?
[I'm walking NR home.]
NR: My friend Mera, from dance class, is having me read this book. It's about two dancers and one of them is dying of cancer. She says they remind her of us.
Me: One of them dies of cancer?
NR: Yeah. It's really sad.
Me: Well which one dies? You or Mera?
NR: I don't know yet. I'm kind of afraid to find out.
Me: So are you hoping she dies?
NR: Yeah.
Me: I guess she deserves it. She did make you read a book about cancer.
NR: Let's not talk about it.
[NR and I lie on my bed watching Girl, Interrupted.]
NR: In the movie do they show the tunnels?
Me: Uh huh.
NR: Cool! Hey, that must be Georgina! She looks just like I had pictured her. And that must be Valerie!
Me: That's Valerie...
NR: I don't like the way they're playing this scene. In the book Lisa was really whiny. But Angelina Jolie plays her as a total bitch.
Me: She was a bitch. She was a sociopath. All sociopaths are bitches.
NR: I'm sorry. I'll shut up. You must hate it when people talk during the movie.
Me: No. I want you to talk.
NR: Liar! I hate it when your fake with me.
Me: No. I like hearing your comments.
NR: Why?
Me: Because if I just wanted to watch the movie I could have seen it alone. I wanted to watch it with you.
NR: That makes sense...
[She get's a little misty.]
NR: I want to do this again.
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| Saturday, January 13th, 2001
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5:19 am - A Dream: Not That Innocent
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In the dream...
I have an English class at GW with these two cute girls. We’ll call them Courtney and Jane. Courtney’s blonde with lot’s of blue eye shaddow and a tank top. Jane’s small with dark hair in a pony tail. Courtney’s loud and sexy. Jane’s intelligent and a little reserved. They’re as different as night and day but they’re best friends and go everywhere together. For some reason I have a crush on them both.
I’m on the subway one day when I realize I’ve forgotten my backpack at school. It’s getting late, like five. And it’s snowy out. But, afraid of it being stolen, I get off and board a train going in the opposite direction. When I get back to the imagined outdoor “GW Station” I’m stopped by Courtney and Jane. They want me to go to the bank with them. At first I don’t want to go. I whine about it and ask them all sorts of questions. “Where is it?” “How would we get there?” “How long would it take us?” But they insist and drag me by the arm back onto the train. The doors close and we’re gone.
We get off at Park Street (a Boston location.) The pond is frozen over and all of the buildings are coated in strips of white snow. I don’t remember if we went to the bank. But before you know it we’re in Courtney’s car – a hot convertible. She’s driving. “Where are you taking me?” I ask. “A party,” she says. I look at Courtney and I look at Jane. There really isn’t much comparison. Jane is much more my ideal type. So I start flirting with her. Really obvious and awkward, you know. Even in my dreams. I say just enough to really draw attention to myself and stay silent enough that it’s clear I’m scared as hell to talk to her. Courtney thinks it’s weak. Jane just feels uncomfortable.
We get to the party and take off our coats. It’s a very nice place. The sofa is brown leather. The entertainment center is crystal. The walls are oak. It’s very crowded but we’re able to secure seats on the couch. I sit next to Jane and keep trying to shoot the breeze with her. “So, what do you think of our class?” Blah blah blah. That’s when I notice the photographs ontop of the crystal cabinets. One is of a heavyset older woman with glasses. And one is of Britney Spears.
“Oh my God,” I say. “These people know Britney Spears personally.” This interests Jane, ever the observer.
“I noticed that too,” she says. “But how can you be sure?”
“Look at the quality of the picture,” I say. “That’s an actual photograph.”
“But how do you know?” she asks.
A big, broad shouldered guy from class happens by and very casually confirms that the hosts are tight with Britney and she often comes to their parties. All of a sudden I grow nervous as hell. I become convinced that Britney Spears is coming and NR won’t be there to see it. I think about calling her but I don’t know if I can use my hosts’ phone. I begin looking for something to write on but all I can find is some stupid love note I was writing to Jane. I can’t put the signature for NR on a lovenote to another girl! Courtney and Jane don’t seem to notice or care that I’m having issues. Britney Spears walks out wearing a bright yellow thong. She’s really flat back there and not much to look at. I barely aknowledge her. “Where’s a pen?” I want to know. “Where’s a pen?!”
I wake up to the creepy sound of my dad snoring on the opposite sofa. It scares the shit out of me. You wouldn’t believe how much his snores sound like “Henry... Henry...” I could barely go back to sleep.
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| Saturday, January 6th, 2001
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11:55 pm - Death of an Original
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My great grandmother killed my great grandfather. But she didn?t mean to.
At the time they were married my great grandfather, Henry the 1st, was already a successful man. After serving on the front lines of World War I he had started a welding and carpentry practice in downtown Atlanta. He constructed ten foot tall wooden crosses for the church or artful sterling silver paper weights for the office. He could make anything given enough time. He worked out of a dusty studio in a bad section of downtown Atlanta. He didn?t make much money. Just enough for an elegant, single story house in the briars.
I don?t know how he met Selma. I?ve never really heard her story. But I know she was a lot younger ? maybe fifteen years. It didn?t mean too much at the time. Secure, money earning men routinely married adolescent girls (which is why, today, Barely Legal magazines are pretty funny.) I?m told they were very much in love. I suppose she didn?t marry him for the money, considering as he didn?t have a lot to spare. They probably married out of true love.
They shared the church in common. Henry read the Bible over a hundred times. He could recite any passage of it from memory and went to church week in and week out, even as he grew too old to do anything else. Selma used to craft things for the church ? dresses or decorations for their holiday parties. By most modern standards she led a very boring life. She worked as a secretary now and then. But for decades she stayed cooped up in that little four room house in the briars, writing poetry. It was all she loved to do. She would stare out the windows and write for hours, waiting for Henry to come home.
One day she died. She had grown very old by then, just letting the days pass by. I was only a child. I saw her once ? in a white hospital room, hooked up to machines. But I?ve never been able to forget her. She had the presence of someone really special. Henry came to see her every day at the hospital. But when she died he was heart broken and grew very sick. He stumbled around the house, smashing into things. He burned his hand trying to cook dinner one night. His flesh had grown pale and papery thin. The flame seared it, scarred it forever. He tried to climb a stepladder to change a lightbulb once and fell from the top. He wasn?t able to call 911. He just lay there, truly miserable. My grandmother Lucy had stopped by to deliver a tin of cookies when she found him. He was admitted to the same hospital where Selma had gone.
I never wanted to visit him. He was so pathetic I couldn?t look at him. His jaw was like mush. It was as though the bone were gone. He slobbered when he spoke. He died just a month after his 95th birthday, an event on the roof of the hospital which I was forced to attend. I never forgot how proud he looked. My whole life I avoided trying to look at him. But when he died everything changed. I understand now how he felt. It hurts that I was so mean to him. I just never knew what love was.
I?m the fourth Henry, a namesake which has always meant a lot to me. We?re all very different. My grandfather was more stubborn and conservative, my father was more needy and intellectual. I don?t know how I?ll be remembered.
All of us were born in Georgia. My forefather?s all married very young. They all stayed married for their entire lives. They all raised wonderful children. I?ve never wanted to be just like my relatives. Most of them are fat and bald and never leave the house. But sometimes being a Henry doesn?t sound so bad. They all grew old with people they loved. In that way, my namesake is an honor. I wonder if I'll die for love. I hope I die for love.
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