Munchausen

Once I was in the forest with my grandfather, Mike. He was a great outdoors-man, and he was teaching me how to hunt. I never saw Mike get scared of anything. Except that day. We were trailing some deer, and, out of nowhere, this huge goddamn bear flies out of the brush. Looking all ugly, showing his teeth. He stopped and raised up on his two back feet. Mike froze. He had his 30.06 still on his shoulder, might as well have been a walking stick. The bear came back down on all fours and charged. I was learning many things at that time, including fire-starting. I patted my pockets as quick as you like and found two flints. One I threw as hard as I could at the bear's head. It flew into his maw and sank down his throat. It didn't kill him, but he was hurt and he turned around to think things over. I saw my opportunity. I whipped the other flint up his ass, sidewinder style. I chucked that flint so hard that it struck the first flint in the bear's stomach. Explosion. Man, I blew that bear straight back to hell.

I thought about that the other day when a friend of mine was proud that he'd figured out how to get the toilet to stop running.

Quiet Midtown

It was quiet at MOMA the other night, after we got in. We said hello to the woman behind the desk and strolled past the security guards. We'd just turned the corner when, suddenly, cacophonous noise. There was a jazz quartet, dancing babies, and hundreds of people. Four open bars and food stations. I knew this had to be the place.

I sent my short, fat, gay, Indian companion to get us some white wine and cheese. When he came back I introduced him to the tall man I'd been talking with. "But he's not Indian like that. He smoke-um peace pipe." "Yeah," my companion said, "me trade-um wampum, round-eye." "Round-eye?" the man said. Then we all laughed. There's no shaking art-types. We were here to see the new etchings exhibit by Lucian Freud.

At the stairway beneath a helicopter a volunteer told us there was no drinking upstairs. My companion and I left the tall man and went back to one of the bars. We never saw him later, upstairs, when we pressed into the crowd at the start of the exhibition rooms. Freud doesn't really do sketches or studies. He prefers etchings, and can think in reverse, in mirror-terms. There was a series he'd done of his daughter with a Pluto t-shirt on. He wasn't happy with her face and had the printer buff out the brass plate where her face had been, but kept the background and body the same. He'd had it buffed out twice. The third time he was finally happy and printed copies. All three were shown here. "Look at the second one," my companion said. "That totally sucks."

We went next door and had a drink at The Modern.

We had a drink at P.J. Clarke's.

We had a drink at Old Town.

We had a drink at Fanelli's.

We had a drink at The Corner Bistro.

It was oddly quiet at Employees Only when we arrived. A slow night. We sat at the end of the bar next to the entrance and my companion visited the bathroom. The mustachioed bartender asked if I'd like some real Absinthe. "Yes." My companion came back from the bathroom. He declined, but ordered some Rittenhouse rye whiskey. The bartender performed the ritual. With the sugar cube, the fire, and the slotted spoon. He advised me to take it slowly. It was a little more than a shot's worth. It took me about three swallows. A little later, as the walls began to move oddly, my companion announced he was going to try out the secret bathrooms downstairs. I told him I didn't think he would make it out alive. People's faces were at once blurred and sharply in focus. Eyes straying to the middle of foreheads.

I thought about my companion. His husband is in New Mexico. He's a lawyer, or something. My woman is in Indonesia and I hear from her less and less. We're friends on Facebook, but her status hasn't even changed in two months. As far as I know she's still about to board the puddle-jumper to Jakarta. "He's not Indian like that, you sonsabitches!" The mustache-bartender was too polite to hear me. Maybe I hadn't said anything. Maybe it was in my brain. I tried it again. Same non-response. Right now we have each other, my companion and I. He likes Paul Simon and Luna Bars, but I like him anyway. Lucian Freud has sometimes been criticized for portraying people with hyper-realism. Almost in caricature. So what? Let people have moles and lazy eyes. What I've been resisting in online communities is a streamlined version of the self. Second Life is for masturbating. Also, I feel oddly displaced on Facebook. I'm connected constantly with everyone I know, or can be, but am alone in my apartment.

Fourteen hours later my companion came back upstairs from the bathroom. He told me a story about his adventures down there and I listened silently. He sat down next to me when he was finished and he was silent, too.

Thanksgiving

I wasn't raised in a part of the country where it snowed. Shoveling isn't something I associate with a chore. I like it. I like it in the same way I like ironing. When it's over it feels as though I've accomplished something.

I found myself this past winter in Minnesota, in a suburb of Minneapolis. I'd been staying in a rented house when the blizzard hit. It had snowed all night and when I woke up at five the driveway and walk were covered in four inches of snow. I went out and began to clear the walk. It would be a few hours until dawn and the plastic scraping against the concrete was hushed and insulated. I found a cowboy hat in the house and used it to keep the snow out of my face.

I lit a fire later and watched the snow keep coming. It was almost noon when I shoveled again. I almost couldn't tell where I'd been earlier that morning. I had to keep the driveway clear, though, because it was time to visit George.

I'd met George a week before at the nursing home almost a mile away from my rented house. He sat in the dayroom with his friends and looked out the window at the snow and at five watched the news. He was tall and rangy with a long neck and happy, birdlike eyes. He was missing the index finger on his right hand. He'd played baseball for some team in southern Minnesota when he was younger. A pitcher. Straight out of the eighteen nineties with his long legs and slight frame. "I could throw them all," he said. "Curve, knuckle, spitballs. I had an eighty-six-mile-an-hour fastball." He'd been scouted by the Cardinals. "I coulda played for those guys, too." But he'd been at work one day at the envelope factory when his hand slipped and the paper press severed his finger. He kept pitching. "My curve ball was never the same, though, after that. Used to be I'd toss that ball with such a nice curve it'd come right back into my own mitt." He chuckled. "But it never was the same."

I'd created tall banks on both sides of the walk and driveway. I preferred to shovel when it was dark. It was meditative to hear only the scraping and my breath.

I saw George on the last day of the blizzard. He'd only recently come back to this Home, he'd tried a stint at a larger facility, but didn't like it. His roommate swore too much. Plus all of his friends were here. His wife would come often. His son, too. I asked if got to visit home much. He said he'd just had Thanksgiving at his son's house. It was a good meal. I asked if he ever went home to visit his wife. His eyes became very bright and he had to blink a few times, then wipe them. "No," he said, "I think if I ever got to go home, I wouldn't ever want to leave and come back here." He was quiet a while and looked out the window.

I never saw George again. I had a ticket out of town for the next morning and he died a few months later. I haven't been back since. The snow was petering out, but it still covered my old tracks and I went out to shovel the walk and driveway in the quiet very early morning for the last time. It was still dark out. I thought about George and his mangled right hand and his suddenly bright watery eyes and a home. I have none, but where is a place I can imagine of such happiness that I hesitate even to visit for fear of never wanting to leave again, and how do I get there?

Bozeman, Montana - 11/22/07

Quiet SoHo

It was late and quiet at Spring Lounge the other night. I sat with my short, fat, gay, Indian companion at the bar. He was drunk. We'd been drinking Rebel Yell and trading jokes with Dermot, the bartender. He'd just put one into the universe that would send him straight to Hell, if he believed in it. I didn't, and was trying to think of something equally foul, when my companion, who had been near dozing, snapped awake and asked us what the best thing about having sex with twenty nine year olds was*.

My companion rebounded after visiting the bathroom. I asked him if he'd heard of the girl in the East Village with the X-ray eyes. He said something disgusting, then apologized. I wasn't joking. She's Ukrainian and lives on Eleventh and Second on the fourth floor of a walk-up. She's a child. People come from all over and wait in lines down the hall and stairs to see her. She sits on her couch and inspects you. Her grandmother translates. She can see your organs.

"There is a girl in New York City," said my companion, "who calls herself the human trampoline. And when I'm falling, flying, tumbling in turmoil..."

Dermot ambled back over and said some terrible things. He let them sink in and ambled back away. My companion asked me about the lines down the hall. "Why do people believe?" I said I thought it was the nature of this city. Maybe the country. You can invent yourself here. If you say you're something, then you are that thing as long as you want. You don't even really have to back yourself up. If you can convince the people you meet that you're an art dealer, or a writer, or a music producer, then it doesn't matter that you work at David Z. People want to believe.

We agreed that there are exceptions. My companion asked how I'd heard of the Ukrainian girl who can see you from the inside. "I saw her," I said. "She said I was fine."

(*There are twenty of them.)

Quiet Brooklyn

I was at the Lutheran Church of The Messiah in Greenpoint, in Brooklyn, Thursday night. My short, fat, gay, Indian companion and I were there, downstairs in the multi-purpose room to see a show. His name is either Phil or Mount Eerie or both, I could never be sure. He sat by himself on the stage, off to one side, looking at the projection behind him of what at first seemed to be a still photo of a dock on a lake with the moon at the top of the frame. It was a movie, you could see the water lapping the shore. "Is this the new place?" he asked someone in the corner. "Is this the new place where they have shows?"

We'd come early before the doors were even open. The fluorescent lights were still on and there were four or five happy-looking youngsters milling around. I cursed my companion for bringing me to a Youth Group. "Listen," he said, "don't you ever feel like there's something missing in your life? Well I've got a friend I'd like you to meet. His name is Jesus." We laughed and laughed and went down the road to Enid's to get started on some beer: it was already eight o'clock and this show wasn't even off the ground. They were playing all of Mr. Dynamite at Enid's, a collection of James Brown's old recordings. Impossible to tear ourselves away.

We came back the the Lutheran Church of The Messiah a few hours later. The multi-purpose room had been transformed. It was disappointing to be in the basement, but our promoters had done what they could. The fluorescent lights were off, and green and red light bulbs had been screwed into the sconces. There was a stage with other colored lights splashed across and a quiet Belgian woman performing on her guitar. The room was packed with acolytes and the curious, sitting quietly cross-legged on the floor, like kindergarten.

"It's like kiddie gardners," said my companion. "I have to piss," I said. I tip-toed through the crowd and sidestepped beer bottles toward the bathroom. As I neared, the Belgian woman's set ended and I found myself at the end of a line to piss. All was not well. "Dude, I'm having a shitty day," a man in front of me said to a friend. "I lost my job today. Job of five years. I guess someone in Ireland can do it better." Bitter young man. "Fucking Euro's so strong right now." "Ja," someone said in front of him, "I know vhat you mean. I'm from Sveden." "Hell yeah, you know what I mean!" "Ja, like this yacket cost me only like tventy Euro." "Yacket?" the bitter young man said, "it's called a jacket! You're stealing our jobs!" The Swede left without using the bathroom. He couldn't have been more than fifteen.

It was now time for Mount Eerie. The moon in the first shot on his projector by the end of the song had risen out of frame and then it faded into a shot of mist creeping through trees that lasted about as long as his second song. He seemed a little shy at first, not talking much between songs, but looking back at whatever shot was appearing on the screen behind him. A contemplative set, just him and a classical acoustic guitar. He loosened up as the set went on and told little stories that were met with applause and laughter. Everyone loved him. This is what they'd been waiting for.

For his last song he informed the audience that they had to sing along. But he wouldn't tell them the lyrics and he'd never performed it. But they could read his mind: it was completely open. "Just read it. It's like you go to your airport dropdown menu and scroll through to find me. It's called MountEerieConcert555. Okay? Is everyone there? Okay, here we go." He sang very slowly, stretching out every word long enough so people could telegraph what it was. The effect was that of chanting, or prayer (a little Catholic, maybe, for a Lutheran church, but there it was). The verses were funny: "Where is the Mount Eerie concert? I got a flier today on the street." Then he would break out into a quicker response that wasn't sung along: "There is no concert. Mount Eerie's turned to dust." It ended with the following. Sung along: "I've RSVP'd. I'm here in the basement of the church. Where should I set my stuff?" Then the quicker response: "That stuff isn't yours. You'll be taken tonight, in dark arms."

Stuffed Animals, part 2

We'd blown it. It was that simple. There would be no show for us tonight. The Cougars
had distracted me. I'd been concentrating on the vodka they'd been ordering. "Vodka cran. Just a little cran. And some soda. Grey Goose if you have it, or Belvedere." They were on the prowl.

"Those Cougars sure are on the prowl tonight," said my short, fat, gay, Indian companion after I'd come back from the line up the stairway. "Forget them, kid." I said. "What they're on the prowl for has almost nothing to do with you, or what you're prowling for." We discussed bocce ball. There are two such courts inside Union Hall. The line, though, was insanely long, and unless we instigated some sort of Hall-wide brawl, there was no way we'd get in there. And I no longer had the heart for instigation.

Back in our niche by the fire underneath the books I almost paid for the whiskey. But I decided that I was by God going to see some dead, stuffed animals that very night. And instead of paying, I ordered more. And our minds turned, as they will, to music. We were starting a band named Angel Glands. Esoteric music using esoteric instruments. Eso-Core. Polyphonic rhythms on such diverse tools as: a theremin, a washboard, a Jew's Harp, found percussives, a comb with wax paper wrapped around it. Every song title would be about Leonard Cohen. "Leonard Cohen Bites My Rhymes." "Leonard Cohen Made Out With My Girlfriend (and Gave Her Herpes)." "Leonard Cohen is a Buster." Every title taking Cohen down a peg, because, really, he's had it coming. For a long time. There would be one song, though, just called Angel Glands. It would be on our album, Angel Glands, by us, Angel Glands. We'd eschew Eso-Core for one song and be a traditional three-piece with and infectiously poppy song that would put us on the map. This would also complete the triangle, the first two sides of which were built by Bad Company and Big Country*. We were destined for greatness.

The talk of Leonard Cohen, naturally, led to Nazis. I pulled a book at random out of the nearest shelf and opened it. It was the beginning of a chapter and its first line was "I lost my virginity to a Nazi." A very useful line, we agreed. In any sort of situation. "Would you like cream or sugar in your coffee?" my companion asked. "I lost my virginity to a Nazi," I said. "Does it look like I want cream or sugar?" And more in this vein.

I blinked my eyes and suddenly the Hall was filled with Scientists. Unmistakable corduroy and facial hair. I knew the show had let out.

My companion and I beat a path to the stairway. He hesitated at the top. "I don't know if I want to go down there. I can't really deal with death." I reminded him of the Great Spirit and counseled him washteh. He finally agreed and we descended into the dark, humid, cramped cellar.


It was still packed with people, Scientists and lay people alike. I had to shoulder my way to the exhibits. I heard talk of a two-headed ostrich. I didn't see it. "I still don't get it," my companion said. "Is it just funny? These are a bunch of dead things." He was peering at some of the taxidermy boxes. "No," I said. "They're reminders of things that once were living. Taxidermy doesn't glorify death. The reason this trend is sweeping the city is just this reminder. Nature. Natural habitats. These kids long for something: the famous pioneering spirit, the myth of the Old West. They don't have the balls to actually move to the country or lead a for-real hard scrabble life, but they connect with the idea. Or maybe they do have the balls and have only recently come to this city. Taxidermy in a tiny apartment represents this Urban Naturalism. It's not ironic. It's serious and fun and not somber. It's a philosophy. Look at all the people here. They love this. So do I." All of this uncharacteristic tangent was lost on my companion who was staring at a standing badger dressed like the Pope.

(*Editor's Note: Big Country never released a Trifecta. The band had a single called "In a Big Country," but the album was named The Crossing.)

Stuffed Animals, part 1

"Watch out! Guy's got a dead animal." Someone yelled at me outside Union Hall, in Park Slope, in Brooklyn, Friday night. I explained to the gentleman that my short, fat, gay, Indian friend, (and not Indian like that, you son of a bitch, he's from New Mexico and building an adobe house with his husband), was not any sort of dead animal. The gentleman replied by pointing at a man pushing a large wooden box on a furniture dolly into the bar. Taxidermy box. I knew this had to be the place.


I was there for an event given by The Secret Science Club called Carnivorous Nights. Darren Lunde of the Museum of Natural History would be speaking and then judging, along with a distinguished panel, contestants's taxidermy. We were early and I found two armchairs next to a fireplace on the main floor and sent my short, fat, gay, Indian companion to the bar to get us started on some whiskey. Directly after he left, a waitress asked if I wanted anything. Whiskey, I said, and maybe some food.

A little later, with now four generous pours of Elijah Craig in deep glasses, my companion and I watched an older gentleman and a younger woman sit across from us at the fireplace on a red couch. A coffee table seperated us in this bookshelved niche. They ordered beer and sliders from the waitress and talked quitely. Halfway through their meal the young woman got up. She never came back. I blinked my eyes and the man was gone as well. One slider left half-eaten. Beer almost full. A group of Cougars on the prowl asked if they could sit down. My companion began to reply that it looked as though the couple was coming back. "Nix," I said, "have a seat. They're gone." And the Brooklyn Instigation Society was born. We would spend the rest of the night trying to start trouble wherever we could. I wanted that old man to come back and have some altercation with these Cougars about his stolen seat. "What if they had a knife fight, " my companion asked. "That would be awesome," I said. The old man and his young lady never reappeared.

A steady stream of bowties and courduroy jackets with leather elbow patches had long been passing. They all wore sneakers with their get-ups, as they all were Secret Scientists. I knew it was almost showtime and I sent my companion downstairs to find us some seats. When he came back to tell me the room was full to capacity I knew I had to find out what the hell was going on myself.

The room was indeed full to capacity and there was a line up the stairs of people waiting vainly to get in. We were too late.

(Will our heroes ever get to see some taxidermy? Will the Cougars pounce? Will there be any knife fights? Tune in to read the exciting conclusion of Carnivorous Nights!)

Not Arizona, Not Maine

I was driving up La Brea and stopped at a light. There was a Trader Joe's on my left and I stared at the weather vane. A bear was attacking a lion on the east/west axis. The wind shifted and the scene disappeared. The light changed. I continued north.

I'd heard about an old vaudevillian named Ben Blue who'd also had some success in the movies and later on in television. He was able to travel during the Depression, and made a trip to Norway in nineteen thirty-four. He was taken by the culture and history and in particular the sod houses. When he returned to California he decided to build himself one, in Encino. The roof is covered with seven inches of sod, and the exterior is clad in simple slate flags. The interior is almost completely constructed of pine and Blue had traditional Norwegian murals painted throughout. He lived there with his wife until he died in nineteen seventy-five.

I sat in traffic going up the hill in Laurel Canyon and peeked up at the houses ascending the steep grade on either side of me. There aren't many really impressive houses on such a busy street, you have to go looking for them in the winding cul-de-sacs. The facades are often deceiving in the hills, though: most are squat and narrow. It's only when you enter that the houses open and sprawl for seeming acres.

I was looking for an immediately impressive house. Driving along the wide avenues of the Valley I thought about a movie I'd seen about Los Angeles. One line had stayed with me. "Roland thinks L.A. is for the brain dead. He says if the sprinklers stopped you'd have a desert. But I think, I don't know. It's not what I expected. It's where they've taken the desert and turned it into their dreams. I think it's also a place of secrets: secret houses, lives, pleasures. And no one is looking for verification that what they're doing is okay."

I found the address in Encino and parked across the street. A tall hedge surrounds the property. I hesitated going in. I lit a cigarette and looked across the street. It only occurred to me after a moment that the grass hill I was staring at above the hedge line had an extraordinarily straight edge and a chimney coming out its middle. I moved over a few yards and was able to see a section of the house set back behind a circular drive. I walked halfway across the empty street and stopped again.

I realized that Steve Martin was right. This city is a place of secrets. Ben Blue was dead, but now mowing a sod roof was someone else's idyll, and without being invited I'd never want to see the Norwegian murals.

Mid-Wilshire - 2/17/07

Scientific American

I was at the Farmer's Market on Fairfax eating at Du-Par's. They've only recently re-opened and I wanted a tuna melt. It was terrible. The people around me were terrible. I wanted a cigarette when I left, but restaurants don't give out matches anymore. Du-Par's is indicative of the entire Market which has been surrounded by an outdoor mall named The Grove. There is a certain variety of person who shops at this mall and he can be found anywhere in the country, from Mizner Plaza in Fort Lauderdale to the Westwood in Seattle. Du-Par's has died and business has never been better. The Farmer's Market is a left-over, the city has grown around it. When I first started eating at Du-Par's the Market was stranded in the middle of an enormous parking lot belonging to CBS. You could leave the Market and smoke a cigarette leaning on your car and gaze at the massive studios emblazoned with the unblinking eye.

I went for a walk. Walking is surreal in Los Angeles. Since one drives almost everywhere distance is measured only in time which is relative, depending on traffic, weather, and time of day. I walked up Fairfax to Beverly and thought about cigarettes, fruit salad, and television. The noise was surprising, another consideration not noticed while driving.

I looked into the movie theater at the corner and had seen every offering, it's a second run place. I'd never walked down Beverly and felt like seeing what it had to offer. There is a western apparel shack, really, a shack, called Kowboyz which has an amazing selection of boots, snap button shirts, and leather jackets. I'd never noticed the store before.

I was struck by a store named Empiric at 7918 Beverly. It sells home furnishings. An all encompassing store, Empiric offers couches, lighting, sand timers, urns, earth map globes, scientific measuring equipment, and vintage printed images of Los Angeles. I'd never noticed this store, either. Empiric opened six years ago selling only interesting-looking vintage laboratory equipment meant for display in the home. It was only in the past few years that more traditional items were added. There has recently been a demand for taxidermy, so vintage antlers and squirrels under glass domes have appeared. Empiric embodies a trend I've seen develop in this city which strikes a chord in me, but am afraid to name it. It's a mixture of modern urban design with the almost Victorian flavor of a cabinet of natural curiosities.

I left and turned right onto Fairfax. I bought a lighter at a gas station and smoked a cigarette on my way back to the CBS parking lot. I only had twenty minutes left on my validated parking.

Redondo Beach - 2/6/07

Manifest Destiny

I spend my time in delicatessens and hotel lobbies. I was at Canter's today and saw a man wearing an eye patch and reading glasses. Where does he come from? Certainly not Los Angeles. I saw another man remove his bridge before starting on the matzo ball soup. There was a gap where one of his incisors had been when he smiled at his wife. Daughter? She was facing away from me. On the way out I bought some rugulah and immediately knew it was a mistake. I gave the bag to the gentleman begging at the corner by the parking lot.

I am not from Los Angeles. I can't imagine anyone is, and since people are unknowable, why anyone comes. There is the draw of fame, weather, population. I came for the beauty, or rather the juxtaposition of urban sprawl and natural beauty. This is the quintessential twentieth century city, the ultimate expression of man's will impressed on the land. You must drive everywhere and it was here that the freeway was invented. Seen from above overlapping freeways are both organic and mathematical. This basin was desert; the Indians called it Smoke Valley, evidently, from the petroleum fumes that would be caught between the mountains. Now this city holds some of the most beautiful foliage in the United States. I spend my time in delicatessens and hotel lobbies to see what sort of people come to such a place.

Hollywood - 1/24/07