Flatscreen Read online

  Because why not share the ugly inside us? Why not revel in the devil, expelled? Let’s be brave, let’s be brazen, bare it all in Jpeg form.

  They got off in time for opening pitch (1:35 vs. Blue Jays), in time to swill Miller Lite, sing “Sweet Caroline” along with thirty thousand other B-hatted hopefuls as our boys in white stepped from dugout to diamond.

  Hadn’t been to a game in years, not since the Ned era, when he’d pick me up in his urine-yellow ’86 Chevy Love. We’d snake across the Pike (no power steering), honking, singing along to BCN or AAF. Overpay for parking, then park in the bleachers eating relished dogs, admiring Anna the ball girl’s bouncing B cups, willing ourselves into collective reverie.

  No one to go with now, Ned was dead, Dad out in Sudbury, Benjy not a fan. It’s true I’d had friends once, but they were gone too, off to college, G-chatting the days away, waiting for night under campus lights, hair assholically gelled.

  Switched at Park to the Red Line, headed for Harvard. Where once sat women—mothers, commuters—now there were coeds, 18 to 25, my demographic. They studied under dark-tunneled duress, textbooks flopped open over hiked skirts, hands frantically highlighting with thick neon Sharpies. Even in public they were in their own worlds—calculus, bio, postfeminist theory—sheltered from subway odor by perfume force fields, sequestered from frat-chat by DJ-sized headphones. Pristine ladies of the Red Line: pedestaled by their own pampered beauty, deaf to my desperation.

  At Kendall, a group of black girls got on, all young, all a gaggle with hood slang and unrestrained laughter. Loose-fitting Nikes over tight-fitting jeans. Natasha was among them, just another subway bopper in the USA: sassy and befriended, admired by her peers.

  Waved my hand in warm hello, but the girl wasn’t actually Natasha, didn’t want my tender friendship.

  “Whatchou looking at?”

  “Yeah,” her friend added. “Fuckin’ pervert.”

  Because looking was illegal. Nothing worse than to focus eyes on another, study how she went about the world. We were isolated selves, shoved into solo corners, stabbed by stuck-out umbrella ends and pangs of futile human4human hunger. We publicized it all on the Internet, from inner thoughts to excrement, exhibitionists until someone turned to look. Then suddenly we were shy.

  Head down in reply. Floor thick with mud, liquid life. Sunkist can rolled through the aisle. Gum wrappers glued to the floor. Mushed remains of a Snickers bar.

  Couldn’t remember the last time I’d left Quinosset. Used to come here all the time, peruse record stores, stock up on army surplus attire back when that was hip and maybe so was I. Seventh grade? Tenth grade? Who could remember? Biggie was right: things done changed. But the reliable Pit was still roughly the same.

  A dugout redbrick arena surrounding the subway stop. Clubhouse for castoffs: teen runaways, day-trip skater punks, post-love-dread-hippies smoking mom-filched Salem Lights. Lappin and I used to join in poser repose. Tried to coolly hover on the fringes, sneaking looks at the goth girls, pretending we belonged. We didn’t belong.

  In a sense the Pit kids were like me, but bolstered by the confidence of their anti-everything convictions. They’d forgone the comforts of bed, bath, etc., for pseudo-socialist camaraderie. Slept over heating vents. Spent days scaring tourists by poking out pierced tongues, wildly ollie-ing, groveling for dollars. Drank beer from paper bags, called cops pigs, hustled out of sight.

  Today the Pit was packed. Like a Pit kid convention: dudes with rattails, dudes with hemp tails attached to their pants, dudes tattooed to their bodies’ limits with images of dragons, medieval weaponry, evil-looking clowns. They condescended over the interloping others—Harvard kids, adult homeless, street musicians, lunching bank tellers—who shared their brick empire. Played something called the Penis Game. Started with one guy whispering the word “penis.” Then the next, singing it a little louder. Taking turns until, eventually, the bravest among them screamed “penis” in full voice, in triumphant glee, as if the word could shatter the world. The Penis Game’s subtext was oddly affirming: “The body exists. Don’t deny that shit, son!”

  Plus something encouraging in the way they all laughed, rubbed shoulders, affectionately called each other “shit stains” and “clit-dicks,” head-butted, fake fought, fell off skateboards, fake cried, fake died, faked fuck-sounds, fake mugged freaked tourists only to point and laugh, rejoice in the power of defining an environment. It all seemed choreographed, this Pit-stage scene. Like some avant-garde performance piece, untrained actors just happy to be there, thrilled to know their lines, get them right, watch the audience react accordingly.

  Onward.

  Brattle Theatre: last of the art houses. Seats still cramped, uncomfortable. Add your own salt to the popcorn. Screening room basically empty. Just me and an elderly couple, wool-cardiganed, sipping Vitamin water. Lights down. Exit signs cruelly lit to distract audience from on-screen immersion, remind us of the outside world’s continuing existence. Credit screen: Wood and Nail. A film by Dietmar Klee.

  Opens wide on some serene wilderness. No animals. Just weak sunlight through leafless trees, ground dotted with snow. Slope of hills, small sound of wind. Close in on a man-made structure, only one for acres around. Entirely built of unprocessed wood, unvarnished, unpainted. Fully tamed, but so expertly as to give the impression that this place has sprung straight from snowy ground, untouched by man, a feat of naturalistic architecture. Like a tree-house cathedral, complete with tresses and turrets, columns and skinny steeples that appear unprepared to withstand nature’s wrath. But they stand resiliently still, don’t shake or shiver. Hammocks in a courtyard gathering dust. Ground littered with burst balloons that look as if they’ve been there for years. Camera moves 360 around this mini-kingdom. Out back there’s a trash pit on fire, contained flames reaching up to the sky.

  Cut to inside. Kahn sits in a wooden wheelchair at a lap-level circular saw. Pulls a clean piece from the contraption. Admires it, first with his eyes, then with his fingers. Minutes pass. Kahn’s beard is thick. Carrot-colored curls hang halfway down his back. He’s bundled. A chewed cigar sits smoking in an ashtray. Kahn sips straight from a bottle of rye. Puts the bottle back on the dirt floor. Picks up his piece of wood again. Tosses it violently, with more force than you think he can muster. He has thick arms. The wood hits the wall, weakly splinters, that’s all. Falls. Kahn picks up the cigar. Spits into his hand. Puts it out on his palm. Camera closes in on Kahn’s hand. Cinders stain his skin. Cinders swirl in golden light.

  A woman enters, stage left. A beautiful woman: lithe, blond, at least six-two, six-three. Some German giant, genetically blessed, inhumanly symmetrical. She wears a summer dress: gray cotton. You can see that she is frozen. Skin blue. Fingers shaking. No shoes. Dirt between her toes. You can see that she is sad.

  Days pass. Kahn sits in silence. He drinks, he smokes, he sleeps. He doesn’t leave the studio. The woman brings him sandwiches. She goes back to her room, to her canopy bed that’s been physically built into the floor, like a dais covered in cotton pillows. She buries her face. She stares into a mirror. She chillily bathes.

  Weeks pass. The woman takes a lover. I’m not being precious. On the DVD liner notes this chapter is titled “Woman Takes a Lover.” The lover is the man who delivers the milk. Thick-armed, appropriately flannel-garbed. Good in the sack. They fuck without fuss or conversation. Strip down, insert. Pump away on pillow mountain, slowly sinking to the surface of the bed. They do it loudly, at times angrily, at times ecstatically. All possible positions. It looks like they’re actually having sex, the actors. Real penetration. Certain angles make this obvious. The man’s uncircumcised penis is the size of a small arm. The woman’s blond bush bursts forth like some extinct species of shaggy rodent. In a good way.

  This circumstantial shift at first seems to have left no impression on Kahn’s character. He knows about the affair, is neither bothered nor excited by it. But then a strange thing happens. He begins building again. His work
shop is arranged for easy use by a man in a wheelchair. Everything is lap level. All tools bolted to the wall within arm’s reach. The room is arranged precisely for Kahn’s use, but still things are hard.

  (Through conversation between the woman and her lover we understand that Kahn has lost the use of his legs in a work-related accident that occurred shortly after the completion of this wooden kingdom, and that may, in fact, have been self-inflicted, committed on purpose.)

  He still struggles. Scrapes his arms. Scraps whatever project he is working on. But he does not quit. Starts another project. Something is emerging. Some ill-defined wooden object.

  Concurrently with Kahn’s new wave of inspiration, the weather changes. Snow pours down in clusters. Wind wakes the surrounding trees, tears them from the ground. The earth is unsettled. The woman becomes ill. She develops a fever, probably from all that time spent in unseasonably skimpy outfits. Her lover tends to her, but he too appears to be dying. He too has lost weight. They no longer fuck. They fill the kettle, sip from small cups of tea, lie distant on separate sides of the bed.

  As the storm rages on, Kahn becomes further incensed into action. He closes in on completion, staying up past dawn, sanding, shaping, extracting finger splinters. Eventually his project is complete. A wooden flower, four feet high. In full blossom. Wood petals thin as paper. Detailed down to the tiniest bits of sawdust pollen. The film ends as it began. The woman enters the workshop. Her body is blue. She stares at Kahn.

  At the exact moment the lights went up I received another text from Kahn: “Do you see?”

  twenty-six

  The Status Quo:

  • So my father never built me a tree house. Big fucking deal.

  twenty-seven

  Fall came. Landscapers walked the streets, Hispanic mostly: Dominican, Ecuadorian. They drove paint-flecked pickups. Summer I’d see one napping in back, but once it got cold they took breaks on the tailgate, drinking coffee, smoking cigs, laughing laughter that didn’t feel universal, but specific to a softer language, free of sharp consonants that leave the tongue curled awkwardly, unprepared to emit low sounds from the gut instead of the throat.

  Noises would start early, seven or eight a.m. If the guys lived in Quinosset, they lived in the lettered streets, but they probably didn’t live here. Probably woke at sunrise, kissed their sleeping children, piled five into the cab of the truck, headed down Route 9 from Roxbury or Dorchester.

  Meanwhile, the women I imagined to be the wives, sisters, cousins of these men poured out of a baby-blue van, unloading yellow buckets, mops, vacuums. They had their own rhythms: sneakers squeaky against soapy floors, Dirt Devils sucking dust from ignored crevices, silverware herded, clinking like cowbells. Giving our house one final going-over before Kahn replaced us. Mom wanted the house to shine, even though it was only Kahn who was moving in. Movers were coming at two. I hadn’t finished packing. Still at my computer checking Facebook to see if Jennifer Estes had written me back. She hadn’t.

  Two minds when it came to packing. First: get rid of everything; let the trash collectors haul it. Could “turn over a new leaf,” as Benjy had said the previous fall, out in the backyard. I was smoking a cigarette, watching him rake leaves because the landscapers didn’t come to our house anymore; since Dad had left, they only went to the neighbors. Benjy raked like he lived, like a bird eats, little by little, looking anxiously over his shoulder. Thought it was a cheap metaphor, telling me to turn over a new leaf while he was raking leaves. “Did you just come up with that?” I said, flicking my cigarette, half-aiming toward one of the leaf piles, half-fantasizing it would catch hold, burn the house down.

  Couldn’t burn anything. The house was sturdy, carved in my mind: life I’d lived so far, personal eternity, until death or dementia takes hold, but even then, trapped in my bones, reborn into the earth, the grass, what the hell am I talking about? A pile of old Rolling Stone, Spin, Sports Illustrated, some books from high school, CD jewel cases? That’s why my second mind—true mind—was to keep everything, all the evidence I’d been alive, starting in ’86, year Buckner let it through his legs (metaphor for my birth?), surviving: one divorce, one brother, one dead uncle, one terrorist attack (three hundred miles south), one hurricane (farther south), pneumonia at age eight, multiple ear infections, one herpes scare (things were looking okay), bad grades, bad haircuts, bad breath, chapped lips, numb toe syndrome (imaginary), headaches, dick aches, farting, insomnia, etc.

  Had Rolling Stone going back to ’99, my bar mitzvah year, world going Y2Krazy, hoarding cans, wishing themselves apocalypse. Year Dad stayed out late, while Mom sat waiting at the kitchen table, leg tapping like a metronome, nails scratching invisible words in the formica counter, eyes shifting between the little TV and faux-retro Coca-Cola clock.

  I was a magazine man, liked the feel of paper, its glossy tactility, the space it filled. On one cover, Kurt Cobain is named artist of the decade. A headshot, fierce in detail. All those lines on his face would have been covered by makeup on anyone else, or airbrushed out entirely. But with Kurt they want you to see the pain beneath the surface. The photo must document the authenticity of his angst. We’re meant to look at his pale eyes and unwashed hair, know he meant every word, meant that slug.

  Wondered if my own face looked the same—sleepless, prematurely aged—but I wasn’t pretty. My eyes are brown. Hair curly, unmanageable. Can’t brush it from my face, can’t sweep it behind my ear with chaos-cool. Didn’t have the balls to kill myself. Afraid of death. Wanted rest, not eternal rest. Mainly rest from the interminable noise of vacuums and treadmills, the sounds of my plugged-in mother, who happened to walk in my door at that instant.

  “What are you doing?” she said. Her hair shined platinum. She’d had it colored recently, to impress our new neighbors.

  “Just packing these magazines.”

  “You can’t take all that stuff. There’s no room for it.”

  “I’ll make room.”

  She picked up an empty soda, eyed it, sank it in the trash with a surprisingly accurate underarm toss.

  “Eli,” she said, like she was talking to a stubborn child.

  Mom bent over again, picked up a crumpled newspaper.

  “I’m saving that.”

  “This?” She looked at it. “It’s from May. All crumpled up.”

  “There was something in there I wanted to save.”

  An article about a Japanese installation artist who takes everything from his apartment, sets it up in a gallery, an exact replication of his own living arrangement. Gallery stays open twenty-four hours. People can use the apartment as they please—sleep, lunch, work, etc. He’d set one up in Boston. I’d considered going, hadn’t. Never been to an art gallery before, couldn’t see myself among the wine and cheesers. But I’d kept the article. On the floor, but I’d still kept it, read it over a few times. At another installation he’d just cooked pad thai, served it to people all day. That could be me. Ladling food into Styrofoam bowls, nodding. Spreading simple pleasure.

  “Keep it if you want it.”

  “It’s about this Japanese artist guy.”

  “Do you want it or not?”

  “Just toss it.”

  “I don’t have time for games. The movers will be here soon. And turn that music down a bit.”

  “Fine.”

  “C’mon Eli,” she said, left the room.

  Took everything off the shelves: sports trophies, which get taller and taller, then end at eighth grade when I started smoking pot, didn’t feel like running sprints, not worried I might need better stamina for sex when it actually came; baseball glove, a Wilson, soft black leather, frayed edges, hardly fit over my hand anymore, still smelled like spring somehow; ten-sided dice from my “Maybe I’ll fit in with the D&D freaks” phase.

  Closet: large box of old baseball cards, including the valuable ones I’d stolen from Mark Sacks. Figured I’d give them to Benjy’s kids one day so they’d like me, defend me when Benjy called me a fuck
up. Packed my prom pictures, me and Eva White, a sophomore, my girlfriend for a couple months. Dumped her because she was a mathlete, even though she was cute, didn’t make me use a condom because her parents were hippies, let her go on the pill starting when she was fourteen. She used to cry after we had sex. Said it was because she was happy, but she didn’t seem happy, just young.

  More photos: high school, sophomore year. John Sammel had just gotten an eighteen-inch glass bong. The next weekend his parents were away. A whole gang of us christened Billy Bong Thornton, which Sammel had unoriginally named after the bong Dave Chappelle uses in the film Half Baked. I’d bought a disposable camera to document the experience. Surprising to see myself among friends. In one shot Danielle Poole has a hand on my shoulder. Year everyone had hemp necklaces. Danielle was the only girl. Hooked up with older guys, like Sammel’s brother, but never with us: me, John, and Matt. We all wanted Danielle. She’d sit on our laps to torture us.

  Put the pictures back in the box, shut the lid. Hadn’t spoken to John, Matt, or Danielle in ages. Danielle’s family had moved to Atlanta, so when she went home for the holidays she went there instead of here. John and Matt were roommates at UMass. They used to e-mail, try to get me to visit. Lived in a dorm where no one went to class and everyone smoked pot all day. I’d love it. Kept saying I would go without intending to, not sure why, just not up for it. They stopped inviting me.

  Brought the cardboard boxes up to the front hall, dragged the trash to the curb. Two guys stood outside a moving van, big white guys, one with a goatee, the other with a handlebar mustache. Tee shirts even though it was freezing.

  “You the movers?”

  “Fuck does it look like,” Goatee said.

  “Good point,” I said, led them inside.

  “You guys want some coffee, soda?” Mom said.

  She’d laid out bagels on the kitchen table, too. We hadn’t had guests in a while.

  “We’re on the clock.”