Patrick Fealey's Blog, page 12

snapping

snapping

it’s sunday. my head hurts. i have to review a book. before i review it, i have to read it. i don’t want to read it. it’s sunday. my head hurts. i might feel better if i could write my own thoughts, but i have to review this book. i’ve read 14 pages. it’s an historical romance. a lot of people care about such things, even when they read like finding your car has been towed. it is so warped you can hear the trees worry about their reputations. but i have to review this book. it’s been published and the author is my editor’s friend, so i have to review it. i guess i should go now and read it. then i will interview the author and she will be foxy and confident. and i will give myself another headache submitting to the genre without being too negative. and the publisher will be silent and the writer may be dissatisfied and my editor will pay me and more lies will arrive in monday’s mail.

her pending fame

her pending fame

she sat on my bed

and said she was where she wanted to be

like she’d fuck me if the others weren’t there

she was talking about van gogh

but i was just a music critic

and sitting on my bed was great networking

she was a blues singer and unknown

her style was a rip-off

of billie holiday, patsy cline, and janis joplin

she had long legs and she kissed me

painted my face red with lipstick while my friend laughed

she wrote my number in her small black book

she said she would call but she never did

because she knew i wouldn’t write a goddamn word

until i heard something original

i saw her in bars a few times

in her white acoustic cowboy boots

long black hair hanging in crazy tight curls

she was pale but for the red lipstick

i had cooled and lost track of her

it had unraveled the night she came to my place

we listened to her first demo

her voice was what you’d expect:

highly proficient spot-on copying

but the guitar tracks were great

i mentioned the guitar work

and she said, “they have to go. because the guitarist

mentioned royalties. he thinks

i’m going to be famous or something,” she said.

he wasn’t the only one, babe. babe.

she said his name and i knew juan well

had written about him several times

he was brian eno’s guitarist and one cool madman

on and off the axe and especially on the dobro

last time i saw her avoiding her pending fame

was on brook street in providence

she was going to a gig and invited me along

i passed and she persisted

-- the next thing i knew i was running down the street

to get away from her lipstick and guitar case,

prison to so many i admired

hand-job

hand-job


ragged novelist meets fabulous blonde fashionista. a former gap executive, she started her own clothing company on martha’s vineyard and grossed $800,000 a year. the writer lives in two rooms surviving off social security checks of $579 per month. he receives disability because he is one of the most fucked up minds in world history. he does not give a shit about her money, but she gives a shit about his clothes. before they can go out on the little town, he needs some Armani and Kenneth Cole. she’s got friends about and those black Reeboks look like they were issued on the funny farm. they have a discussion about his clothes, which is worse than discussing engine problems in a car you do not own. killing the conversation, he tells her she can get him some sandals, save her money for that waterfront house she is buying on cape cod. the relationship went on for some months and when she talked about cape cod, his participation was implicit. his mother told him to marry her, but he couldn’t see living with her, as much as he liked the cape, as much as he liked the idea that he could ask her for a Porsche. she was very enthusiastic about the material, so easily both smiling and shrewd. the scene was a scene and it was far from his two rooms and desk, where he came alive every morning. while he dined with her, showered with her, and fucked her, he knew he needed only one incident to break free. her downfall came one night on the day bed, when things got naked and fast. he was on his knees and she was leaned over him, sucking his cock. he felt that he might come. then she sat up and grabbed his wet cock. she commenced giving him a hand-job. it felt very good, but he thought it was a demotion and waste of semen. he threw her onto the floor and fucked her until she was screaming. she came. he came. the next day he took the ferry back to the mainland and home. he thought about his time on martha’s vineyard. what angered him was the hand-job. he was 35-years-old and had never encountered a woman who tried to give him a hand-job. he considered it weak and unromantic. at best, it was inexperience, which he did not tolerate well. at worst, it was a dodge. it was her choice. he could have gone along or he could have demanded she swallow his cock, but neither response was natural to him. he had handled the situation as best he could, but he did not like the idea of a girl who believed in hand-jobs. no matter how much he contemplated her point of view, he came up with the word lame. he wrote to her and ended it. he cut himself off from the beaches of martha’s vineyard and cape cod, shedded the Armani, Porsche, and this hot little blonde who thought she’d give him a hand.

"cigarette" by amber

girlfriend material

GIRLFRIEND MATERIAL


after a week

we pulled

ourselves out of bed

and went on our first date

we sat

with our chins

in our hands

until the food came

and L shouted

“THOSE MUSSLES LOOK LIKE MY PUSSY!”

Two couples at

the table nearest us turned

and broke out

laughing

the men laughing louder

than the women

i laughed, embarrassed, but this was L

We had met at the beach

on Sunday

and on tuesday, L said:

“YOUR COCK IS HUGE!

I WAS HOPING IT WOULD BE!

YOU DESERVE TO HAVE

A BIG COCK. SOME GUYS

DON’T.”

so do you, i said

By Thursday she was questioning my sheets

insisting that i wash them

she had a phobia about DUST MITES

“DUST MITES!

DUST MITES!

DUST MITES!”

by our one week anniversary

we were out of condoms

and L wanted to jump on my cock

“MY PUSSY IS THROBBING!”

We fucked most waking minutes

and afterwards she called me from

the bathroom

“IT’S SUCH A SHAME. ALL THIS

CUM WASTED.”.

i hoped so.

weederman

friends

friends

Michaela – drowned scuba diving

brian – a drunk hit his motorcylce

jim – pancreatic cancer

bob – stroke

lou -- aneurism

mudslide – drowned off fishing boat

amber – overdosed

gannon – shotgun

david – peritonitis after botched hernia surgery

when i think

of my

best friends

and lovers

and friends

who have

died

i don’t think

about how i miss them

or how they were

so much

as i think about

how i wish they

were alive

for other people

to discover

the bike’s odometer

was pulled from the

wreckage

pegged at 85 mph

what i cannot say

what i cannot do

what is lost

drug agent (literary)

a star

really a meteor

falls

behind her

as

she asks me

what success will change

in me

if anything

she wants to know

if an advance

will hasten my

trip to the morgue

by putting a

ticket to afghani

in my veins

i tell her

i will quit the scene

subtract temptation

from my weakness

& move off skid row

& quit

& go surfing

she doesn’t want to

fund an

overdose

mainly because

she and my sister

have been

lifelong friends

this is only the first

conflict

i have with this

new literary agent

outside

on a wednesday night

under the stars

standing beside her

mercedez

leveled and tuned

to a morphine groove

while she leaned

spread

against her car

while her boyfriend

fucked some chick

i saw her there

waiting

and

i was too high

to fuck around

art the bastard

art the bastard

my landlord

thanked me

after he cut

his hand

on a power saw

he builds furniture

after a career

as a professor

teaching chemistry

and history

his obsession

is the Nazis,

but he loves

his cat

and making furniture

he spilled blood

all over the

kitchen floor

and i cleaned it

while he was

in the

ambulance

when he got back

wearing stitches

and gauze

he saw the clean floor

and thanked me

but after i painted

a canvas

of his giant farmhouse

and he ogled it

and i gave him

the painting

he

did not

thank me

los angeles

                                                  

                                                    los angeles

bobo left for the big football game in late morning. kick-off was a couple hours away, but he wanted to extract a full day and night from those 60 minutes of play time.  i was on the couch, healing.

bobo had made every effort to impress upon his pizza-boy brother that he would be seeing the u.s.c.-notre dame game in person, whereas the snark and i would have to settle for the tube. since i cared only about gladiators and surfing, bobo’s bragging was, for me, mostly a hint that if i stayed on the couch i’d be stuck with a pissed-off snark all day, especially if the fighting irish were behind.

  bobo: “there’s gonna be a million people, all drinking beer and screaming for touchdowns and hotdogs! i’m gonna be in heaven! while you’re here watching pick-up truck commercials!”

  “don’t forget the announcers,” i added.

  “yeah, that’s right. i’m gonna be thinking for myself!"

  i gathered from my prone and blanketed position that the snark’s silence meant he was clinging to the hope of some hail mary death in his family, or any family with a ticket. then he marched to the kitchen in his slippers and came back with a beer, sat down in front of the tv.

  some cartoon was on.

  he didn’t look at bobo:

  “maybe the big one will hit and your ass will score a goal post.”

  bobo: “or maybe i’ll be smothered under an avalanche of beer bellies! in which case i couldn’t hope for a more respectable way to ascend. i plan to smother a few myself!”

  snark: “not with that pathetic skeleton. your physique is the reason i should be going. you are not an appropriate representative.”

  “i will drink aplenty in compensatory compensation, representing only myself.”

  snark: “a two-headed humiliation. just go. leave me alone.”

  bobo: “i await upon my transport to the stadium momentarily among the peasant class of amateur collegiate sports fans, the television class for whom i shall diligently prepare an account of what really happened, as well as a diary chronicling more personal moments, in order to thus provide color and imagery with which you may fill in your forthcoming inexperiences - without intent of augmenting and agitating jealousies, of course.”

  “fuck off!”

bobo had balls going to this game. it seemed mercenary. but practical. sense is brutal. what else could he do? he wanted to go and there she died and there he would be. he was acknowledging the death of a friend’s mother  by sitting in her seat, with the father and sons who lost her. he is amidst their loss now and that is not easy. he is in it more than the other relatives, any of us. this is the family, minus one, plus bobo. if you say he is tactless for asking for the ticket, or without conscience, then you still must say that each time they look over and see bobo and not their mother, they will see a friend and a positive reminder of her. reminders are as inescapable as death. his self-interest is acceptable. as a son with a mother, i would prefer his laughter to an empty seat or the face of a stranger asking “is anybody sitting here?” bobo took it and i think he knew at least instinctively that his participation would be best for everyone. bobo took pressure off those around him. good in giant surf, good in death.

 

after bobo’s departure, the snark became more anxious about the game. he made several round-trips to the kitchen the half hour before kick-off. as he re-entered the family room his eyes were on the television to be sure the talking heads were still engaged in pre-game foreplay. each time he stood up when a commercial came on, i got uneasy. what if the game started while he was at the other end of the house? was i supposed to go get him? he would blame me if he missed the coin toss. i already had enough problems without his football disorders.

  i was lying on a couch looking like a bruised eggplant. i was alert and lucid and immobile, and about to puke while the snark yapped about notre dame in response to some numbers on the screen. he said bobo was an ass for not taking the scholarship to the university of southern california, that bobo could have played pro ball so long as he was not injured, that i needed to see how these stars ordered pizza to know the lifestyle he was talking about, to see their houses, and that bobo had been unfaithful to responsibility in general and despite how it looked and what he said, he, the snark, wanted his brother to be famous. that was why he was mad.

  i sat up. “bobo had a scholarship to u.s.c.?”

  “he never told you?” the snark said. “he was all-state defensive tackle for hermosa four years straight. more sacks than anyone. he broke all the state records. he’d be starting in this fucking game.”

  i needed a helmet.

 “football is the only reason bobo got into humboldt,” the snark said. “he’s been dodging the coaches since he got there. he just used it to surf and drink beer.”

  “he has a football scholarship?”

  “what do you think, his a’s in golf, surfing, and volley ball got him in?”

bobo was at the game, drinking amidst his definition of the privileged, on his third beer. the snark could think of nothing worse than seeing his brother on tv hoisting a cup of budweiser with his absurd grin.

  “if i see his face, even if it’s only in the pack, i’ll, i don’t know what. he’s already at the fucking game.”

  i could take no more of the snark. his bathrobe was damaging my psyche. i was feeling that despair. i had to do something, act, get out before my defenses against the snark made him superficially acceptable.

  “snark?”

  “what?”

  “i’m gonna check the waves.”

  “okay. whatever.”

bud, bobo’s lab mutt, was outside the back slider, chained to los angeles. i stroked his head. he couldn’t come. once again.

the keys were under the seat. weederman, it was easy. he would find the waves. downhill. the waves would shake the hangover the easy way. a last session before we split for humboldt. tonight i would be driving north. bobo would be in a beer coma, anchored by hotdogs. he would speak in horse farts. i’d be staring out the split windshield at 1,000 miles of orange trees while he snored and puked in the rearview. he would be digging himself in while i fought to keep my eyes open on a stretch of i-5 so wide and endless that i would succumb to racing thoughts and suicidal ideation. we’re leaving this town tonight. this is it. we’d passed on santa cruz, rincon had been flat, and baja had fallen through to pigeon gobbles and asscracks. in the end, there was l.a.

so bobo was a fugitive at humboldt. bobo didn’t talk about football up at school. i knew he had played in high school. that’s all. there must have been some fuck-up or forbearance with his tuition. it would not last. maybe the coaches were still waiting for him to pull up. or maybe, maybe he didn’t even have classes? i had not really paid close attention to his academic life, but i hadn’t seen  much of one.  it took the snark to blow his cover. if bobo had evaded u.s.c.’s attempt to turn him into a star, bobo had said no to a different life. it was a gateway into the ultimate american dream and he had chosen to go surfing and open beers with his buddies. it was difficult for a guy like the snark to grasp personality when confronted with fame and money. the snark respected the television. the snark got a kick out of delivering pizzas to mansions. bobo had a simpler vision of freedom for himself and so far as i knew, he didn’t give a damn about football. he did not follow teams or players. the crevice bowl was a once-a-year joke with his buddies. and this u.s.c.-notre dame game was a gigantic beer tap with 50,000 guys up to the urinal. i had only known bobo two years after his decision, but it seemed to me he was who he had always been and he had done the only thing possible. or he had at least done the right thing. when we got home i’d ask him about these football scholarships, but i already heard his laughter. 

down sepulveda. through manhattan beach. the pacific horizon. and then the sand. there were waves, yes. i pulled into an empty lot. the pier was off to the right. a set came in, four or five feet, pushing while they peeled and turning hollow on the inside. the water was a translucent green inside and blue in the sun out to the horizon. another south swell and there was nobody out yet. just a body boarder in the lot.

stucco marked the arc of the bay, tight as a dam. backyard of the city, the city of backyards. telephone wires thrown up in ball tangles, waves at my feet. i got into my wetsuit near the sign: “changing in this lot is prohibited and violators are subject to a fine.” fine and prohibited were the women jogging and rollerblading the strand in licra shorts and tank tops. an old guy was doing yoga in the sand. he was small and had the tan of a man with time. he had long, defined muscles. age had backed off him. in his 70s, the guy looked like he could kick my ass. fronds moved high in the offshore. the sand was fine and white. where the sand was wet, i saw orange-beige granules, paler than the brown sand in humboldt. i met the body-boarder while i was putting on my leash. jeff. a friendly kid. there were a few black stains on the sand. there was a refinery just up the coast. spills were routine, bobo had said. and sewage. the whole south bay had been closed recently because of sewage. bobo had laughed. in the distance, malibu was a crescent sun lying on its side, looking better and separate. between sets, i jumped in and paddled out.

my arms and shoulders burned, they were knotted, but the stiffness would break. water on my face chased some of the nausea. i paddled out along the piles. floated over the corrugated sand. pelicans were atop the pier railings, watching for fish. big birds, those pelicans, like fat old men with skinny legs and sagging chins. the horizon shook into lines. i dropped onto my board and was outside in time. i let the first wave pass. the second was thick and clean. the first wave crashed behind me and i met the second wave and turned. i stroked and it lifted me, it had me. i dropped and carved right off the bottom, found the slot and flew as the water cascaded behind me. a snap off the lip and i dropped in ahead of the curl. the lip zipped me inside, the white homes turned green. the tube closed out fast and i hit the bottom. i surfaced with stinging eyes and a burning throat. i coughed out onions. my sinuses burned. even my ears. the south bay cesspool had rushed into my skull. the bay, the backyard was poison. i paddled back out. the waves were too good to think about mucous membranes. but i couldn’t wait to get back north to moonstone. i sat in the cesspool and made excuses for mankind. where do you piss on a clean planet?

i sat outside, waiting on the next set. the body-boarder had hooked up with a nice ride and i hooted for him. from the pier above, people watched us. i’d watched surfers from the pier and the birds and fish were more interesting. the sandy bottom seemed united with the surface. the diving birds trailed bubbles as they chased fish in a private dimension. at the surface the birds’ orange feet pushed them along. the ducks were fast underwater. the body-boarder had taken his wave into the whitewater. he stood up. i saw three guys suiting up in the lot behind him. a small blow to our session. i would have preferred my one friend, but three more guys was not a crowd. there were plenty of waves. they paddled out in a loud chevron, migrating from land to sea, swearing all the way to the line-up, which was me. the bodyboarder drifted off to the right, inside a distance. the three new guys glanced at me like i was playing badminton.

  they erupted, “i got it! it’s me! i got it! it’s mine!”

  the set they had claimed was far outside. one of them caught a small wave. he jerked like a moth against glass. i was paddling in perfect position. then a guy moved in from the left. he paddled by in front of me and set himself to my right, to drop in on my wave. i was in perfect position and went for the wave. as i paddled,  his buddy came from the left and stopped in front of me. he floated, blocking, looking at me. he had a big head and his wet suit was tight. i couldn’t take off. the wave came and the first guy took it all the way to shore, hooting for himself.

  “tough one, dude,” said the kid in the tight wetsuit.

a perfect five footer rolled in and i paddled for it. the prick who had dropped in on me was out toward the pier and it was his wave. should have been. tough one, dude. i paddled for it while out behind me he caught it. i dropped into his path. his wave peeled perfectly in to shore for me. i tore the gutts out of his ride. he screamed at my back all the way in and was waiting behind me in the shallows.

 “you asshole! what do you think you’re doing?” he stepped toward me.

  “you do it to me. i do it to you. pretty simple.”

  he didn’t know what to say. until we were paddling out and his friends came to help him think. the three turned on me, paddled into my face. his buddies closed in on my right and left. the moth formation. “i am an unstable person,” he said. “i might hurt you.”

  i smiled.

  one of them jabbed the nose of his board at my face. “how do ya like that?” he said.

the waves beckoned. i paddled out along the pier to the end to wait for a big set. i was as far out to the left as i could get without being tangled in the lines of the shark fishermen. waiting and knowing it would come. the waves were building, each set a surprise gift. the big set came and i stroked into a lesser wave that would have been big an hour ago. i shot down the clean line. ahead, one of my friends descended the face into my path. his timing was perfect for a collision. i had to bail or hit him. on my way down i kicked my board at the backs of his knees, i saw it hit him before i went under. i surfaced to find the torpedo had sure taken him down. we paddled back out like nothing had happened. what were these guys like out of the water, aside from evidence that life allows for the unbeautiful and stupid? we sat in the line-up. it was quiet. we were between sets. my eyes met eyes.

  “you’re not having fun, are you?” he said. he grinned. his buddy laughed.

  i said nothing. it was true. the waves were great. the weather was great. the surfing sucked.

maybe god had sat in the pacific bathtub because the sky gave it up. a wave. we all scrambled for the redefined outside, way out. this set was going to move pelicans. it looked to be a lone wave, huge. my point of view changed from “that wave” to “my ass” and i dug into the south bay. i got far enough out and was in good position, but i saw one of the moths was further out, past the end of the pier, where i'd caught the wave his friend had dropped in on. the giant wave was his, but i had little confidence he would make it and i did not bet on him. the wave arrived and i stroked and kicked until it grabbed me. i rose and dropped down the double over-head wall. i leaned in and carved off the bottom. i heard screams behind me. he had made the wave. i’d cut him off. i was stealing his wave. the best wave of the day stretched before me and i felt a requirement to claim it. tough one, dude. the guy howled. the wave peeled. he stayed on my ass forever. i ironed that wave out for him until the lip lifted clear green. i broke into the blue sky . . .  i stood in the shallows on hard sand, face to face with a california brother. his eyes were dark and sick with disbelief, as if he did not know where i had come from. his forehead wrinkled and his lips started, but nothing came out. i waited for it, but he didn’t say anything.

  “yeah, i’m having fun,” i said, “lots of it.”

the moths fluttered up the beach to a new 4-wheel drive toyota. another spot? the oil refinery was a good spot. they threw their boards in back and changed under the palms. i kept an eye on weederman.  if these pricks didn’t know surfing, they didn’t know freedom. it was good to see them go. the ignorance and noise were pollutants worse than a hangover. it was the bodyboarder and me. and the building waves. but my arms were tired and i was dehydrated. the worst of the hangover was gone, but i was thirsty. i paddled for a wave and caught it late, wiped out head-first into the cold stink. i was suddenly feeling beat. they were gone. i was coming down, my adrenalin wasted. the exhaustion was coming. i did not find stoke. i was not having fun. i had surfed with the low, like the low, better at low than the low, like someone else. this is where my surfing now was. i sat and floated at the end of the pier, where the guys were fishing in a tournament for toxic sharks. i knew i should just go in before a wave killed me. the waves, the waves. the sun lowered, spilling red onto blue. i sat and waited for a wave. the sky went orange. one more wave, one last good one more.

the bodyboarder, jeff, kicked back over.  “they were a bunch of kooks,” he said. a 747 rose out of lax and crossed from land to sea, rising into the color so slowly.