I wanted to tell you this

though time is like sleet
falling through the Universe
and you and I are hundreds of lives asunder.

I wanted to tell you that
the lede for the creation of the Universe is ten words.
I strain my eyes to read it.
"In the beginning God created--"

And I'm lost after that.

My thousand selves are feasting on neurons and transmitters,
gnawing at the skull bone for some semblance of spiritual transcendence
trapped in the dying brainmatter---
some splatter of elves and other beings, colors, machines, tunnels with eyes, Gods and Devils, lizards driving school busses---

Only this and everything more, forever, ever more.

Where are the hallucinations we were promised?
Where are the wines dying on the vine?
Where are the wolves and the ants and the leopards?
Those creatures whose consciousness we should have entertained?
Where are the needles dancing on the head of an angel?

We went and found this, and most times we got a headache and a hangover.

How to commit suicide by taking sleeping pills

My room is in a small, wooden cottage in the Adirondack woods. When it rains the roof leaks, drop-by-drop, pearls of water. When they splatter on my floor (is it wooden?), I lick up the little puddles that begin to run to the edges of my cot.

My brother used to live here. He’s dead now; the room is mine. I keep a bottle of sleeping pills on the nightstand beside my cot, just in case I ever need to get out of it. To die, you must shovel handfuls of the things into your mouth, and gulp them down quickly. Just ten or twenty of the things might not do it. To ensure the job gets done, you must lay on your back, so as to induce choking when you vomit. But I’ll save that for later, when it becomes necessary.

Something in me senses that this has all been done before. My life is like a cassette tape that has broken open. Spools of tape are tangled and knotted on the floor. If I close my eyes and look hard enough, I can almost peak into that little stretch of tape just beyond me.

For now, my knees are stiff. I must awaken them when I want to walk, to fetch supper or something. A few hard punches to the thigh will loosen them up nicely, but this only takes you so far. To the mirror, say, where I can look at my gray, matted hair and curse myself under my breath. I don’t know why I curse myself under my breath. Perhaps if I say it too loud I might hear me. Am I there, in that mirror? I don’t want to know.

To walk to the toaster and eat, that is something else entirely. If it is not raining or too sunny, I might make it. I hobble a few steps and fall. To get back up, I grab a chair leg or a lamp stand. It takes a while, but once I get to my feet, I fall again. This advances me a few steps, maybe a yard at most. When I get close enough, I crawl. I can only use my hands, naturally, as my legs are already dead by this time.

Something in me senses that this has all been done before.

Mostly though, I choose not to go to the toaster to eat. The bread is usually moldy anyway. There’s a boy who comes every week and brings a stale loaf. Charity, they call it. He smells like orange juice.

So I lie in my cot and chew off bits of a pencil. I keep a stack on the nightstand. I start with the wood around the graphite. Then I devour the graphite, then the moist, pink eraser, and finally the metal that joins the wood and the eraser. The whole process takes about a day. I raise the thing to my mouth, clamp down with my jaws on the side of my mouth, bite off a piece, and suck on it. The juices are fresh at first, and when it dries up completely I swallow it.

I have 17 pencils left on the nightstand. When they run out, then what? I will have to stop writing. I suppose I could ask the boy to bring more, but what would be the purpose? To go on? That makes no sense.

Something in me senses that this has all been done before. But I’ll save that for later, when it becomes necessary.

Molloy goes west

Rainbows end down that highway where ocean breezes blow.
RH

Another slow train to the coast...
JM

Molloy slumped loathingly into his cubicle on Monday morning, exhausted and depressed. He switched on his computer and took a few hard swigs from the tall Styrofoam cup that held his coffee. His eyes were heavy and tired and his head was throbbing. He spaced out while the machine fired up and the programs loaded one by one.

The offices of Thompson and Joyce Advertising Company were dark and dank at 7 a.m., even though outside the sun blazed intensely. The closest windows to Molloy’s cubicle were located two gigantic rooms away and down a long hallway that led to the mailroom. Molloy had left most of the lights off in the copy room to avoid the stinging burn of neon lighting. He was the only one in the otherwise empty, dark room.

He clicked through his office email without reading any of them. Fifty-six new messages plagued his inbox, mostly from his three supervisors who were asking or telling him the same things three different times even though each of them had been cc’d on the previous two emails. For example, Molloy noticed this brilliant exchange that took place over the weekend:

Sent: 6/4/05, 2:24 p.m.
From: H. Beale
To: Molloy, Burroughs, Yates

Molloy-
I’m still waiting for the Belgium Crunch copy. Please send first thing Monday morning. Thanks.
--H.B.

Sent: 6/4/05, 4:16 p.m.
From: Burroughs
To: Molloy, H. Beale, Yates

M. Please get your Belgium Crunch suggestions to me pronto.
--B.

Sent: 6/5/05 6:49 a.m.
From: Yates
To: Molloy, Burroughs, H. Beale

Molloy, I’m not sure if anyone else has asked for it yet, but we NEED that Belgium Crunch copy on Monday morning. Please make an effort to get it in to us at all costs!

--Yates

And here’s the real kicker: Molloy looked through his “sent items” box and found this email, sent on Friday afternoon:

Sent: 6/3/05, 4:21 p.m.
From: Molloy
To: H. Beale, Burroughs, Yates

Beale,
I have pasted my suggested body copy for the Belgium Crunch cookies below. I look forward to the meeting on Monday. See you then...
--Molloy

And below was Molloy’s copy:

Belgium Crunch
These Belgium Crunch cookies are made from the richest, finest chocolate in Europe and combine the perfect elements of texture and flavor in every bite.


Molloy was tempted to copy and paste the whole thread into an email and send it to his bosses. Instead, he just printed out his copy, walked it over to Beale’s desk and placed it on top of his keyboard. Beale would have to be an imbecile to miss it, but Molloy wasn’t putting it past him. He printed out a second copy for when Yates or Burroughs approached him and demanded it.

Then he hunkered back down at his desk and began responding one at a time to his emails. Over the next hour, the other T&J copywriters began filing into the office. Most just gave Molloy a desperate wave or a suppressed hello, to which Molloy responded every time with a “‘Sup” without looking up from his screen.

The other copywriters and copy chiefs were in their 30’s and 40’s, at least 10 years older than Molloy. Molloy had nothing in common with them, except for their mutual appreciation for a good drunken night. With the exception of one or two, they were all drifters and winos, men who had stumbled into this job because of their connections to Beale, who was the biggest drunk of them all. There wasn’t a single woman who worked in the west coast office of T&J—not because they never hired women, but because no woman could stand being around these foul-mouthed drunks for any amount of time.

Most were hack journalists and wannabe fiction writers who couldn’t get a job anywhere else. Beale had presumably met most of them at some dive bar in Oakland and invited them to an interview the next day. Sometimes guys would show up for interviews and Beale would have no idea who they were or where they came from—he had blacked out the night before and had no memory of scheduling an interview with the homeless guy who slept outside of the Kingfish or some other dive. So Beale would throw them out of the office, screaming and jabbering like a pit bull on speed while chasing and threatening to beat them with a rolled up newspaper.

Molloy wondered how he had even wound up in this place. Two years ago he had been a promising entry-level ad writer and college graduate in New York with at least some sense of hope and illusions of upward mobility. Jim Thompson, the CEO and co-founder of T&J, had taken a shining to the young Molloy while he was still working out of New York and assigned him to help out the senior writers on some of the big accounts that were really driving the firm and making big money. Then one day after Molloy had been working there about a year, Thompson pulled him into his office.

“Molloy, sit down for a second, I want to discuss something with you” he had started out. Molloy had always described Thompson as a cross between Mr. Burns from the Simpsons and Lumberg from Office Space. He was a tall, dangly guy with a white beard and eyes that were beat red all the time. Thompson was a notoriously passive-aggressive boss, often assigning supervisors to scold employees when Thompson himself had a problem with the way they were dressing or where they were parking in the parking lot. So Molloy knew something was up when Thompson had invited him personally into his office.

“Molloy, now you know we’re expanding by adding a few offices on the west coast,” he glared down at Molloy looking for a sign of agreement. Molloy nodded. “And we want to give you the opportunity to help open the Oakland, California office. It would mean a little bump in pay and a little more responsibility, and we think you’re up for it.” Molloy remained silent but nodded a few more times. “Now Hank Beale is going to head up that office and we think you’re going to work great with him. We’re about to close on some great account opps with a few wineries, a grocery chain and a vodka company out there, and we want you to help write packaging content. We’re working with some great designers and branding consultants who have seen your work and are excited to have you on the team. Beale is also looking forward to this, so we trust you’ll agree to the terms.”

A week later Molloy sat up from a barstool somewhere in Greenwich Village and hailed a taxi to JFK airport. He woke up in Oakland airport.

Just as Molloy was thinking about all this, Beale stumbled into the office. It was 8:45 in the morning on Monday and he was drunk. Molloy was the first one he spotted.

“Molloy, goddamn it, how was that goddamn ball?” He was slurring and it came out like “awe ‘uz dat gawd-damn baaaalll.” Molloy was embarrassed and said nothing but Beale kept at it. “Did you score with any blond broads or red-haired vixens?” Blund bruds or red-aairrred vickenszzz.

Oh Jesus, what the fuck is this? Molloy thought. “Nah, Beale, sorry, just had a few drinks, that’s it.”

“You fuckin’ pussy. Goddamn it, you can’t even get some cunt for a night? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Molloy just shook his head. The other writers were staring at him and he didn’t want to make a scene. Finally Beale gave up and went over to his desk.

Molloy thought for a while about the ball and that strange lunch the next day with Lizzy and her friends. He wondered what had happened to Tom and why he wasn’t at lunch. He probably didn’t score with any blond broads either. And what was up with that Cindy chick? She had ignored her boyfriend for the first 15 minutes and was totally hitting on Dark hardcore, and then she came back from the bathroom and was all over that guy—what was his name, Chad?—for the rest of the time. Weird. And she didn’t eat a thing. Everyone else had chowed down like it was the last supper, but Cindy had just picked at some bacon and had maybe half a piece in total. Strange. Well, he was interested in learning more about this freakish crew. They had arranged to meet at a bar in Berkeley for Thursday night, and it was all Molloy could think about all morning.

Like the Chunk from Goonies?

The word on the street is that you might go solo.
--TP

Lizzy burst into another fit of giggles; he has a thing about that? It was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.

“A little touchy, huh?” she asked. Chunk sighed deeply and said nothing, while Molloy was looking up at her with a restrained smile, as if he too was about to burst out laughing at any moment.

This Chunk character in fact looked nothing at all like the Goonies Chunk, which was what she found so funny about it. He was thin, almost sickly thin, with worn, tired eyes and a few days of stubble growing over his pale face like sandpaper. A wave of red hair sat upon his square head.

“It’s cool,” Chunk said. He was hanging his head and staring down at the floor. Every once in a while his eyes pulsated as if he was trying to get them to focus.

“Look, Dark, chill out,” Molloy said. Molloy seemed on edge as well. He was bopping nervously in time to the music that was playing in the restaurant and fidgeting with his fingers.

“Why don’t you sit down Lizzy,” Molloy said at last.

“Oh, I’m with my friends. They’re ordering right now.” She pointed in the direction of the counter. Both Chunk and Molloy looked over.

“Tell them to come over here too,” Chunk said with a nod. He was staring over at Cindy like a salivating wolf. But only Molloy noticed this. Molloy knew Dark well enough. He could tell Dark was sizing up Cindy’s long, rail-thin body and undressing her in his head. He knew that Dark could almost smell the sweet shampoo in Cindy’s long, soft, curly brown hair. No matter that some big dorky doofus had his arm around her waist.

“Alright,” Lizzy said, pulling two more chairs over to the table. After a minute, Cindy and Chad walked up to Lizzy and smiled at Molloy and Dark.

“Chad, Cindy, this is Molloy and Chunk Dark,” Lizzy said. The four of them waved at each other and smiled some more.

“Chunk?” Cindy asked. “Like the Goonies Chunk?”

“Oh Jesus,” Molloy said.

“Right,” Dark said with another sigh. His spirit seemed broken.

“Sit down guys,” Lizzy said, trying to ease the air. They sat down. “Chunk and Molloy were at the ball last night. Chunk was the DJ actually. Hey, you were spinning some pretty clever stuff,” she said to Chunk, trying to cheer him up.

“Thanks,” Chunk answered.

“Well, how was it?” Cindy cut in. “Did you guys have a good time?”

“Yeah, it’s always cool when you can get dressed to the nines and let it all hang out,” Molloy said, taking a sip of his coffee. Cindy nodded and smiled excitedly. She was totally engaged and Molloy could tell she wanted more. He played it for all it was worth.

“We had free drinks all night,” Molloy continued. “Chunk was the musical entertainment and I was the plus-one, the you-and-a-guest. Man, I must have downed about ten mezcals before getting loopy. Danced until 4 when they kicked us out. We haven’t even been to sleep yet. After the ball we went—“

“Wait, what do you mean ‘getting loopy?’” Cindy interrupted. She was wild-eyed with curiosity.

“Well, you know,” Molloy said with a cunning smile. “We had a bit of the rolls. The disco biscuits. The British dancing pills.” Cindy was about falling off her chair in excitement. Molloy could tell Chunk was restless and on edge, looking for an in with Cindy. Molloy loved doing this to Chunk. It was his favorite game. Chunk looked totally tortured and Molloy was on a roll. Chad had no idea what was going on and just smiled and nodded.

“I had a whole set planned out for the night,” Dark suddenly burst into the conversation like a cannon. “Early on I won the crowd over with the booty shaking hip-hop,” he said confidently. “After that I had ‘em. I could do anything I wanted. So when the ecstasy kicked in I stared spinning the psychedelia. You should have seen those lame-ass yuppie fucks dancing like fiends to that whacked-out trance.”

Cindy was completely into him. She tossed her hair flirtatiously and made intense eye contact. “Wow, can you get more ecstasy?” she said, leaning in toward him. Molloy knew it was over for himself, but he was happy watching Dark work.

“Of course,” Dark said. “Any time you want. Anything you want. We’ve got it all.”

Damn, nice, Molloy thought.

Lizzy was unimpressed. She saw right through the act and thought it was foolish. Boys are so foolish and transparent, she thought. But she knew Cindy loved the attention.

Lizzy’s number for her food was called and she ambled over to the counter. Chad rose too to help her. They walked up together and began grabbing plates and drinks. Lizzy glanced back at the table and saw Cindy and Chunk talking intensely. She saw that look in Cindy’s eyes and knew what it meant.

When Chad and Lizzy were back at the table, Cindy was teasing Chunk about his name. This was a sure-fire sign. Anytime Cindy started teasing, Lizzy knew it was serious.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Lizzy said finally. She raised her eyebrows at Cindy, which was their little sign meaning, “come with me NOW.”

They walked together to the bathroom. Lizzy stopped in the hallway when they were out of sight of their friends back at the table.

“Cindy, what are you doing?” Lizzy asked. Cindy gave her a guilty smile and an indifferent shrug.

“Oh, Chad has no idea,” Cindy said, which was true.

“Yeah, well, this is crazy,” Lizzy responded. “As if your little thing with Michael isn’t enough. Now you’re gonna go and get on this raver e-tard? Come on Cindy. You know better than this.” For the first time, Cindy seemed upset and frazzled.

“Look, listen,” she started. “I think I’m gonna break it off with Chad. Fly solo for a little while. If he found out about this thing with Michael, Chad would be really hurt. And not to mention if Michael’s girlfriend found out. Everyone would be hurt and it’s just a bad situation.”

“Ok, well, you can do whatever you want with that, but just chill out with this Chunk guy today, alright?” Cindy gave Lizzy an understanding smile and nodded OK.

When they got back from the bathroom, Cindy walked right up to Chad, got right between him and the table, and out of nowhere straddled his lap, sat down and gave him a long, long French kiss. She ran her finger over his nose, gave him a final peck on the cheek and moved back into her own chair.

Lizzy was shocked but she held it in, showing no emotion.

Backwoods Western

The Telegraph Avenue street fair was a mob scene that Sunday. Everyone in the Bay Area and their kids were out gawking at the street freaks and cheap hemp necklace stands that lined the sidewalks. Berkeley PD had blocked off the whole street and people were spilling everywhere like rotten milk on the kitchen counter.

Lizzy felt the sunlight bleeding into her eyes, making her head ache worse than it already was. Even though the sun was blazing down, a sharp chill ran through the air and cut through her nightgown. Cindy wasn’t coping much better—her arms were wrapped tightly around her body as she walked. Chad just gazed off this way and that, not paying mind to anything in particular.

“I want to run into the GAP real quick,” he said when they were near the university.

“Well I want to get something to eat, so we’re going to Fat Slice,” Cindy retorted.

“Yeah, well, this will be really quick. I just gotta grab a shirt.”

“Your shirts can wait, I’m soooooo hungry,” she said while running her hand against his cheek. She gave him the puppy dog eyes and the sad lower lip. Who could resist such cuteness?

Lizzy wasn’t falling for it. “Listen, you guys do whatever you want. I’m just going for a walk through campus.” And she began walking off.

“Wait, Lizzy, aren’t you hungry?” Cindy said storming after her and grabbing her by the arm. “We’re going to Fat Slice.”

Damn it. Once Cindy had her heart set on something she was doing it, and you were coming with her. Lizzy just gave in and turned around.

“So I’m just gonna dart into the GAP and—“

“You’re not darting anywhere,” Cindy interrupted, “you’re coming to Fat Slice.”

The three of them, the Pajama gang, sauntered down toward Fat Slice, doing their best to avoid the nasty masses of people that brushed by. On the way, Lizzy noticed a new little cafe that had just opened, called “Sink or Swim.” She had read about it in the East Bay Express last week.

“Ooh, let’s go in here, this is supposed to be good.” Without another word Lizzy opened the door, went inside and walked right up to the counter. Their brunch was supposed to be top notch, and Lizzy immediately ordered the eggs benedict. By the time Cindy and Chad got in the door, the guy behind the counter had already handed Lizzy her change. It was a done deal.

Cindy looked pissed, but Lizzy wasn’t worried. She just casually glanced around, taking in the decor. The place had a sort of log cabin theme going on. The walls were actually made of oak. “Backwoods western” was the way the Express guy described it. Not bad.

As she turned to face the counter again, she noticed someone familiar out of the corner of her eye. It was that little fuzzy man from the ball, and his friend the DJ. What was his name? Chuck something. Something like that.

She walked over to their table as Cindy and Chad ordered.

They were just drinking coffee, staring out into space when she approached them.

“Hey, you guys were at the ball last night. I’m Lizzy, remember?”

They were both shaken out of their dream states and looked up at her with startled expressions.

“Oh yeah,” the fuzzy man said. “You were with Tom. Yeah, he was really cool. Hi, I’m Molloy, and this is my buddy Chunk Dark.” They all exchanged handshakes.

“Chunk?” Lizzy said with a giggle. “Chunk? Like the Goonies Chunk?” Lizzy asked.

Chunk’s face got very serious. A strange silence cut through the group.

“Don’t go there,” Molloy said. “He has a thing about that.”

Now there are THREE

In the kitchen, Lizzy stared blankly into space and occasionally raised a spoonful of cereal into her mouth or took a swig from her mug. Each sip of coffee was helping her think more clearly, but the overall post-party depression clung to her. She felt tired yet nervously excited, paralyzed with fatigue yet antsy with anxiety. But mostly she was sad. For what, she didn’t know.

Cindy was eating toast and reading the New York Times online headlines on the computer in the living room, and Chad was sitting on the living room couch watching some ESPN special on basketball in the seventies. Lizzy thought the players looked ridiculous with those high socks and hot pants, but she wasn’t up to making a snide comment.

Lizzy got the sense that Chad didn’t even like sports; he just kept it on in case Tim or Vince might stop by, or Mike or Jerry. She had never seen Chad get that excited about a game; he mostly just zoned out drinking a beer and showed no emotion. His friends were certainly into it though. Tim was a rabid Red Sox fan and would get out of hand screaming at the TV and jumping around after a home run or a win. Sometimes Lizzy felt like Tim acted overly dramatic because it was cool and made him a man or something. Maybe Chad’s indifference was a similar thing—maybe it made him cool.

Sometimes the house was so full of rowdy guys it was nauseating. Chad’s friends could be endearing though, with their little flirtations with Lizzy. But mostly Lizzy wanted them gone, although she would never say anything to Cindy. Cindy was like a chameleon in all the chaos. She fit right in with the boys and would cheer along with the games and knew all the players and some of the stats. She was really pretty sharp when she wanted to be.

Lizzy’s thoughts about Chad and his boys were interrupted when she saw Cindy, now finished with the computer, sit down right next to Chad, grab the remote and change the channel to one of TLC’s home shows, “Trading Spaces.” Lizzy had seen this antic before and knew it was trouble.

“What the fuck?” Chad shouted

“Shut up.” Cindy responded. Chad hated any kind of home show, especially “Trading Spaces.”

“Cindy, don’t make me hurt you, you stupid Jew.” He grabbed her around her neck and fought to free the remote from her clutched hand. Cindy broke free of his grasp and bopped him on the side of the head with one of the couch pillows. Chad burrowed into her and tackled her against the couch, pinning her arms up by her head. He tried to hold both of her arms in one hand while grabbing for the remote with the other, but this wasn’t working. Cindy was a skinny, tiny little thing, but she had a lot of spunk. She had played sports in high school, had even run a marathon once, and she was really quick.

“Chad, get the fuck off me, I want to watch this. I like this show.”

“I hate this fucking show. And I was watching something else, give me the remote back.”

This kind of play fighting could be cute sometimes, but Lizzy had seen enough of it and now it just made her sick, especially with a pounding hangover. She just wanted to be alone. Yes, a nice walk by myself, she thought, that’s what I need. Clear my head, take in some sights, people watch, and just relax.

Still in her nightgown, she walked through the living room and grabbed her coat. As she was putting it on, both bodies on the couch stopped moving. Two heads poked up and stared at her.

“Where are you going?” Cindy asked.

“I’m just gonna take a walk around Telegraph,” Lizzy said. “I want to check out the street fair.”

“In your nightgown?” Chad said quizzically.

“Yeah, well, I just need to go now,” Lizzie said.

“Wait,” Cindy pushed Chad off of her and walked toward Lizzie. “I’ll go with you, I need to pick up some stuff on Telegraph.” Cindy, also in her nightgown, grabbed her coat and put it on. Chad stumbled to his feet, straightened his pajama bottoms and tee shirt, and joined them in the foyer.

“Here, I’ll come too. We’ll all go together. I gotta get out of this place. It’s fucking stuffy in here.”

Lizzy was too exhausted to say anything.

So the three of them, in their pajamas, spring jackets and sandals, marched out of the door and headed toward Telegraph Avenue.

TWO

“What kind of luggage you got? You’re allergic to love.”
Yes I know but I must say in my own defense...
--JM

Lizzy woke with the sunlight burning into her eyes. She let out a long groan and lifted her head from the pillow. Running her hands through her stringy hair she felt disheveled and dirty. She didn’t shower last night and a layer of sweat had glazed over her body and dried up. Yucky, was all she could think.

But when she glanced over at the mirror on the opposite wall, she let out a chuckle. She actually looked cute, she thought, in a kind of “oops I woke up and forgot I was cute” kind of cute. Her hair was scattered about like tangled wires and there were raccoon circles around her eyes, but her face was fresh and glowing. She began making faces at the mirror, mimicking a model responding to a photographer’s demands of “make it sweet! Good, now sassy baby, like a tiger, show me some sass.” She imagined herself on the cover of Vogue, in a stylized Victorian-era corset and ruffled skirt. It would be a trendy, upscale Goth look. The article inside would detail her latest trip to Africa where she distributed condoms to stop the spread of AIDS, or to China where she handed out wheelchairs to poor, disabled children.

Lizzy was embarrassed thinking thoughts like this, but they just came to her for some reason. Icons and symbols like Vogue and all the rest had been branded into her skull since birth. She was a child of the sensory overload generation; everywhere she turned was a billboard and a snappy catch phrase. The world seemed to Lizzy to be a giant shopping mall, a collection of logos stacked one on top of each other. It was the religion of modern times. When God died, advertisements took over to teach the people how to live. They tell you not only what to buy, but also what is cool, how to act, how to look, how to have sex, who to date and who not to date at all costs. Sometimes Lizzy felt like she had no free will at all, like she had strings attached to her arms and legs and was being led around by the world that existed outside of her.

She turned away from the mirror and fell back into the bed. Closing her eyes, she tossed and turned for a few minutes before opening them again and letting out a heave of frustration. She was extremely tired but couldn’t get back to sleep.

Giving up, she rose from the bed, tied her hair back and walked downstairs in her nightgown. Coffee was one thing she needed.

Downstairs, her roommate’s door was slightly ajar. Lizzy pushed it open a bit more and peaked inside. A chorus of snores filled the otherwise peaceful room. Cindy, Lizzy’s roommate, was sprawled out half on top of her boyfriend Chad, who was contorted at a weird angle with one arm sticking straight up in the air. Lizzy let out a quiet laugh and closed the door.

She prepared the coffee and chomped noisily on an apple. She was hungry and devoured the piece of fruit in an animalistic manner she only allowed herself to exploit when she was alone. When the perfume of coffee permeated the house, Cindy came out of her room, wiping her eyes groggily.

“What’s up diva?” Lizzy exclaimed with overly peppy sarcasm.

“Shut up,” Cindy said, “I’m not in the mood.” A tired, angry mug plagued her face.

“What’s wrong? Drank too much last?” Lizzy egged her on.

“Fuck,” Cindy stated, “I think I topped the twenty mark for the weekend.”

“Nice!” Lizzy said. “What does that make the total for the month?”

“I don’t know. A lot. We were drinking mezcal too. It must have been good stuff, because I don’t have that much of a headache. Although my stomach feels like sharks are swimming around in there.”

“Wow, mezcal. I hope Chad was paying.”

“No, Chad, didn’t make it out. He said he wasn’t ‘feeling well,’” Cindy made the quotation marks with her fingers. “I met up with Tina at Get Me High Cafe. And of course Michael was there. Fuck, it was another one of those nights.” She moved closer to Lizzy and whispered. “I strolled in at 5:45. Chad was so pissed. He wouldn’t talk to me, he just rolled over, wouldn’t even touch me at first. I think he suspects, but he can’t seem to get any proof. I’m nice like that.”

“Well, be careful. You know what you’re doing, but be careful.”

“Right, let’s not talk about this anymore. So how did it go with what’s his face, and the ball and all that?”
“Oh, it was really nice, really nice,” Lizzie said. “Tom is, well, he’s cool. We had a good time. The music was good, and it was nice to be all dressed up and everything. But there’s something about Tom. I don’t know, sometimes I feel like I’m allergic to love or something. I just can’t get that into somebody anymore. Or I’m into like three guys at the same time and I love all of them without loving any of them. I’m kinda disillusioned like. I try not to feel anything at all. I just want to be this blob of flesh that walks around the world not feeling anything.”

“That’s a nice image.”

“Yeah, well. Anyway, I fell asleep in his car. We went back to his house and I slept on his couch. I woke up at 7 and came home. Then I went back to sleep for like two hours, but I couldn’t sleep anymore. Maybe I’ll take a nap later.”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Cindy agreed. “I can’t sleep either. There’s something about my nerves after a night like that. A thousand thoughts are flying through my head and I just need to be up and moving around and thinking things through. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m too deep into everything right now. Sometimes I just want to take that butcher’s knife and slash my throat.”

“Well don’t do that,” Lizzy said. “Everything can be worked out. Nothing is really that important in the end. These things seem like a puzzle right now, but when it’s over and you look back on it you see how it all fits together.”

“I guess. I don’t know. I start drinking and everything becomes so unreal and I just feel like I can do anything because nothing is really there. It’s very in the moment, but at the same time it’s out of the moment because it’s nothing, it’s fake. I drink and drink, and my biggest fear is of running out. I need to get to that next drink. If the bar closes, I need to get somewhere where there’s more. I’d do anything just to get another drop, or to ensure that it will never run out. It’s very dangerous and scary, but it’s there. And the more I drink, the more unreal it becomes and the less I need to worry about what I’m doing.”

A rumbling came from Cindy’s room and their glares were both diverted to that side of the house. Chad came out looking scruffy and worn.

“Hey everyone,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’m so hungry I think I’m gonna puke.”

What is your ballroom, please?

Outside the ballroom hall, on a wooden bench near the waterfront, a youngish blond woman in a white dress and black shawl meticulously plops down and removes her shoes. She sighs once before drawing in a second, larger gulp of air, allowing her shoulders to slump and her head to gyrate a few rotations before hunching over and finally settling her chin against her neck. Beads of sweat have boiled up on her neck and under her bangs; her face is flushed. She feels sticky and wet.

After a moment she regains her posture to gaze out into the Bay, whose waters have turned a dark gray in the dusk light. The waves swoosh calmly; a nice breeze tickles the back of her neck as she removes her shawl. A rush of cool air suddenly pierces her warm, clammy skin sending a shutter through her entire body. She giggles abashedly and looks around to make sure no one saw the twitch.

She turns to see a man in a tuxedo plunging down the concrete walkway toward her. The echoing clunks of his shoes become louder as he approaches. When he has reached her, he is out of breath and leans his hand on the bench to gain composure.

She stares quizzically at him, with mock scrutiny, squinting her eyes and raising her chin as if to say, jokingly, “And what’s your deal, strange man?”

Between abrupt huffs, he manages to blurt out, “Lizzie,” huff, huff, “you just disappeared,” gasp, “I looked everywhere,” grunt, “in the bathroom, at the bar—“

“I was hot,” she retorts sharply, jeeringly, “I needed some air,” at which point she nods her head flirtatiously and fixes her gaze back on the Bay.

He slides in next to her and nudges her shoulder with his. She glares back at him with wide-eyed surprise, as if she has taken offense to this crude antic. She holds her keen glare for a long moment, staring him down. He is a little tipsy, wavering drunkenly as he stares back at her. He is in his middle twenties. His face seems worn and tired, ageing, yet there remains a cute touch of youth behind it all. She is still glaring at him.

“What?” he finally blurts out, throwing his arms in the air.

“What? What?” she fires back. “At least if I had someone who could lead I might be having a great time!” She sighs.

“Hey, at least I was out there on the floor dancing—“

“Yeah, for like five minutes. And it was like dragging a sheep across the floor dancing with you, Tom. A girl wants someone who can lead, she needs to be led, twisted, twirled, like a princess. She doesn’t need some flounder-foot puttering around like a monkey!”

They both burst into laughter after this one. In the chaotic guffawing that follows, he reaches out to embrace her and kisses her cheek, but then quickly recoils and makes like he is adjusting his cufflinks. The laughter dies down and there is an uncomfortable silence.

“Well, anyway, I need another drink,” Lizzie remarks.

“Definitely,” Tom says confidently, standing up, throwing his hand in the air and pointing toward the ballroom hall. “All this fresh air is killing me.”



Back inside the ballroom, the remnants of a feast were piled against every wall: plates atop plates reaching to the ceiling were stacked on carts; huge piles of grubby silverware in giant buckets were scattered throughout. Garbage heaped in bins as big as dumpsters sat in every corner of the room.

Still, the room appeared gargantuan, vacuous practically, even with the hundreds of people dancing in the yellow neon light beneath the chandeliers. The rounded ceiling was so high and the room so spacious that it took on an illusionary quality; dreamlike, surreal.

A rush of nausea overcame Tom as he stared out into the crowd. He took a breath, belched, and felt better. Lizzie smacked him on the back of the head for such an inappropriate act among all of these people in black tie dress, but Tom only chuckled and said nothing.

In a booth near the bar, DJ Chunk Dark, as the sign outside the booth announced, spun poppy hip-hop. He had ditched the “classic dance” tunes like the tangos and Charlestons about an hour ago. Truth be told, he had just swallowed a tablet of ecstasy and was hoping to earn the crowd’s favor with this teenybopper shit and then ease them into some funky House tunes, before leading them on a full-throttle expedition of psychedelic trance after midnight. He could already feel the MDMA coursing through his veins and shooting up into the neural pathways of his brain where it would reach the pineal gland and unfold worlds of hyper reality and visionary sublimation. It was gonna be a good night.

Outside the Chunk Dark booth, Lizzie thought it was funny watching all of these people dressed to the nines grinding and bumping in time to the primal rhythms. She didn’t think Tom shared the joke; he was staring so intently at the humping couples it was like he was taking in an opera.

Lizzie snuck into a spot in the crowded bar and ordered a gin and tonic. She turned, brushed some people aside and yelled to Tom, “What do you want?”

“Singapore sling, with mezcal on the side,” he shouted back.

Jeez, Lizzie thought, he’s really up for it tonight. She snuck back in and ordered the drinks.

“Don’t forget limes and chili salt,” she heard from somewhere beyond the crowd that surrounded her.

She grabbed each drink one at a time and blindly stuck her hand through the crowd. Tom was right there to meet her each time, peering into the crowd for daylight, seeing the hand with the drink pop out, and slyly snatching it up and swigging down a giant gulp just in time for the next drink to pop out.

When Tom was safely cradling all the drinks, Lizzie burst out from the crowd and took her gin and tonic.

“Hold this,” Tom said, handing her a lime slice. He poured some of the chili salt into his mouth and dumped the rest on the lime, spilling some on Lizzie’s wrist. He downed the mezcal, grabbed the lime and sucked.

“Ahhhhhhh, just a like a margarita with an extra zap!” he roared. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and took a long, hard swig on the Singapore sling.

Lizzie watched all of this with detached amusement.

In a slick mix, DJ Chunk Dark segued into “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and Lizzie nearly exploded. She grabbed Tom by the hand, spilling half of his drink, and began sprinting for the floor.

She found a suitable place with plenty of space and they started grooving. With their drinks in their hands, it made it difficult to shake and dance too intensely, as well as get too close to each other. But they did their best, not the greatest dancers on the floor, but by far not the worst. Even Tom seemed to loosen up and have a good time with it—a far cry from his former dancing self who stumbled across the floor like an elephant on a skateboard.

He wanted to move in, get closer to Lizzie, somehow work around the infringements caused by drink-in-hand dancing. He could grab their drinks and put them down on a table somewhere, but that would allow any one of the maggots from the swarm of guys that were surrounding them to jump in for the kill—and that might spell the end of any chance he had with Lizzie.

He could take her empty hand, twirl her (though he had no idea how, but he could improvise something in this state of drunkenness) and keep their hands connected throughout, moving closer with each turn of the dance.

All of this brought about a great amount of stress inside Tom, who with each thumping beat danced harder and harder until Lizzie could not possibly keep up—but he was beyond that now, reaching out deeper and deeper into the prehistoric, drunken frenzy whirl that is as old as Time itself, practiced for centuries, millenniums, eons even, by trillions of souls throughout history intoxicated by every plant, root or vine imaginable: the dance to set the self free, to lose the self, to become part of the pure energy of the universe—and he was out there, out on the perimeter, in that huge ballroom among those high society people representing the height of fashion, language and culture, he was out on the limit of—what?

He didn’t know. The song had ended and Lizzie was unimpressed—she didn’t like this song. They both headed back toward the bar and stopped for a breather by the DJ booth. Lizzie wanted to get Chunk Dark’s attention and request a song or two.

Right outside of the booth, a short, dark, little fuzzy man was bopping to the DJ’s beats, watching intently as Chunk Dark worked the dials, tweaked the knobs, added treble or low-end squelch, and with each musical decision Dark made, the little fuzzy man seemed pleased, igniting with laughter or joy. He pointed and pumped his fist at Dark when he beat-matched a tough transition, or when Dark threw in an unexpected vocal sample from some movie from the eighties, or some other cheesy move Dark seemed to be using to get the crowd into it. Dark just nodded back at each of the fuzzy man’s exclamations.

At one point the fuzzy man turned to Tom—Lizzie was still having a difficult time convincing Dark to play Woo Tang—and sang wildly, “dig into to, get on up.”

Tom seemed puzzled but shouted back, “yeah, good stuff,” as he started moving a little to the beat, nodding his head. The fuzzy man came over toward Tom.

“ ‘Sup man, what’s going on?” he asked, sticking out his hand for a low five. Tom obliged.

“Not much. Just trying to drag this girl away from your friend,” Tom answered.

“Oh him, Chunk Dark, he’s a loser. He’s not my friend, more like a necessary nemesis really, one of those people you need staring back at you so that you can prove that you actually do exist.”

This seemed a strange thing to say, but Tom smiled and nodded his head anyway.

By the time the fuzzy man had finished this sentence, Woo Tang came blaring on the speakers and Lizzie dragged Tom out for another round of the humps out on the floor crowded by well-dressed pigs.



In Tom’s car, Lizzie is tired, worn down. As Tom cruises through the urban streets, zigg-zagging down one ways, through tunnels, across bridges, Lizzie seems distracted. Tom wants to put the radio on, but thinks twice, feeling that the silence is a nice break from the chaos of the ballroom. It is 1:30 and by now Chunk Dark is well into his psy set, high on chemicals and music. Both Tom and Lizzie show signs of extreme exhaustion, but Tom is focused and awake at the wheel. Lizzie is slumping, struggling to stay awake yet noticeably bothered by the uncomfortable trauma brought on by aching heels, smeared makeup and tight clothing.

“Did you have a good time?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she responds with a long yawn. She is by now nearly asleep, caught in that strange place between dreaming and waking where you’re not sure if what your hearing is happening in your dream or in reality.

Marquis de Sade

“No habit is more easily acquired than mard (excrement)-savoring; eat one, delicious, eat another, no two taste exactly alike, but all are subtle and the effect is somewhat that of an olive.”
--M d S

de Sade's descriptions of eating excrement may be the most repulsive images in all of literature. To the human mind, there is something so incredibly reprehensible, foul, repugnant, objectionable, nauseating, gruesome--whatever word you prefer--about eating shit. I can count on two or three fingers the number of times I recall the act of excrement appearing in literature (there is of course the famous Ulysses scene), but to celebrate in a literary work the willing ingestion of excrement is pretty twisted. And fascinating.

From Court TV's "Crime Library: Criminal Minds and Methods":

"Eating feces represents the figurative extreme, the furthest end of the spectrum of human behavior from that end which represents the height of ecstasy and self-fulfillment."

And Sir Thomas Moore, author of the original Utopia, once declared, “Love has its excremental component, and this, along with the more wholesome diet, has to be consumed.”

Shit, like love, is pleasurable. The physical pleasure induced by taking a dump can border on orgasmic, certainly, and there is something commendable about having the stomach to take the load down the throat and savor the tangy zest. But love, like shit, can also be painful. This type of behavior, both eating shit and expressing and experiencing the painful aspects of love, represents the "dark self," the grungy underworld Herman Hesse dissects in Demian which is the opposite of comfort, enlightenment and security, but which inevitably must be confronted and embraced to reach complete artistic freedom.

My interest in the Marquis de Sade was sparked by a series of 3 or 4 dreams I had two nights ago. In my dreams, I was studying the work of a de Sade-type character (it wasn't actually de Sade himself) whose writings were destroyed by the church after he was burned alive for crimes inherent in his lifestyle and writings. What remained of my de Sade figure's body of work was both beautiful and repulsive, like the complete artistic human being.

Interesting that my dream positioned the church as the destroyers of the de Sade figure's writings. According to de Sade's biographies, as a child he was exposed to outrageous orgies, scarring sexual abuse and fetish behavior by nuns and priests of France's high society in the Jesuit seminary where he was studying to be a man of God.

Again, from the Court TV crime library, "the men and women of the cloth availed themselves to the pleasures of the flesh to no less extent, and probably more so, than the lay worshippers to whom they were responsible for providing moral guidance. It was not unheard of for orgies to be held within the walls of convents and abbeys, wherein priest, nuns, prostitutes and nobles commingled to partake of the most scandalous and debauched activities."

This disillusioning hypocrisy, combined with de Sade's horrifying experiences, at the age of 15, as a soldier during the Seven Years War, created the beautiful monster who praised eating shit, and perhaps more than any other figure in history personified the Blake ideology that "the path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."