Loudermilk

by Lucy Ives

  Lizzie touches the binoculars but leaves them on the sill. She presses her nose against the cold glass.

  Now her mom is sitting in the snow. This should technically be prohibitively uncomfortable, even with her mom’s Moncler parka, which Lizzie is likely to steal. Breath and smoke rise as wraiths, degenerate. Lizzie is trying to observe the look on her mother’s face, because she’s noticed that it changes. She’s made some notes on this fact in her diary, about how her mother looks so much younger sometimes now, about how she looks kind of worried, too, but not exactly worried. It’s difficult to explain.

  Lizzie has seen the movie Titanic three times now. Once really stoned, once sober, and one time kind of stoned, plus hungover. She feels there is this instructive continuum between Billy Zane and Leonardo DiCaprio, both of whom are obviously gay in real life but whatever. Leonardo is really nice the whole movie long, and he’s sexy, but there’s nothing quite as sexy as when Billy Zane is near the lifeboats being evil. The look on Billy Zane’s face when he is near the lifeboats, Lizzie can’t quite explain, but it is like the epitome of sex. So, therefore, what Titanic teaches you is that the best person to try to get to fall in love with you is someone who is somewhat outside of your natural social group. When you find this person, this gives you a lot of power. Then people who are within your social group (the Billy Zane character, for example, in the case of the Kate Winslet character) have to give you a lot more respect, because they recognize that you don’t depend exclusively on your born social group to give your life meaning. You know how to have adventures. It’s very American to be like this, which is why Titanic is one of the powerful movies of all time right now, being that they have come to the end of the greatest American century and now it’s apparently time to set fire to a certain mostly non-Christian sector of the planet.

  Lizzie thinks that maybe every adult in America has seen Titanic and realized they need to hurry and find their Leonardo DiCaprio before the total flowering of the apocalypse. The way her mother is looking into the air now as the sun begins to set makes Lizzie think of how Kate Winslet looks when she takes off all her clothes to pose for Leonardo DiCaprio, even though Billy Zane could show up at any second. In that moment, when she’s naked, posing, Kate Winslet doesn’t give a fuck if Billy Zane suddenly shows up, because she’s busy making herself truly vulnerable to another human being for the very first time in her life, and there is something strong in that, and this is something that Billy Zane’s character could never take away from her. Anyway, it’s like this is, weirdly, what her mother is doing, even though she’s not naked and is only talking on the phone while flirting with pneumonia.

  She kind of looks vulnerable. It is intense.

  It’s particularly weird because when Lizzie’s mom first started telling Lizzie about how maybe two people can love each other very much but still not be right for each other in the long run, Lizzie didn’t want to believe it, and she was probably kind of mean to her mom for saying that at the time. Lizzie thought that her parents really loved each other and were happy. This shows how much Lizzie knows.

  Lizzie still sometimes, though, when she is in her room, can’t help thinking about Thanksgiving when Harry was up there with her and she tried to make him tell her about Loudermilk. Harry, Lizzie reflects, would have been perfect to be her Leonardo DiCaprio, but obviously she is not lucky enough to be into that. Lizzie is cursed with liking guys like Loudermilk, the Billy Zanes of this world. She’s cursed with stalking them at the mall and downtown, then calling them up constantly until they agree to see her. And then she’s cursed with needing to bend them to her will, which in Loudermilk’s case has included a lot of agonized grunts and blue balls in semi-public places. Anyway, Harry is kind of a weirdo, even if he is a Leonardo, what with him being in such proximity to her bedroom in the first place and obviously right in the middle of perpetrating some kind of freaky voyeur thing on her mom. It felt, speaking of voyeurs, very French, very New Wave, for a second there, and perhaps Lizzie had been somehow reacting to that. Lizzie sighs. Now her mother is getting exercised about something or other and the smoke is coming out heavy and she’s starting to cough. Actually, it looks for a second like she’s choking, but then she’s waving a hand in front of her face or even laughing, and she hangs up and flicks away the cigarette and goes indoors, and it turns out CPR is not necessary, for which thank the freaking Lord.

  Anyway, it’s Saturday, the worst day of the week. Not to mention that today happens to be the worst day of the second week of February and also the worst day of the entire year.

  Lizzie is supposed to call some people she knows to do something, but honestly she doesn’t feel that much like it. She thinks about working some more on her art project, still shoved to the back of her desk drawer and now additionally sequestered inside an old Christmas card, a churchyard drowning in iridescent snow.

  Lizzie puts the binoculars down. She’s done with her Pirate’s Booty, which will be doubling as a low-calorie dinner. She goes into her bathroom to wash her hands and spends a little time primping in front of the mirror. Lizzie reflects on the fact that she’s way too good for this stupid town. Even her mother knows it, which is why she feels so guilty all the time about them having to live here.

  Maybe they will go to Switzerland. Lizzie can meet some new men there.

  Lizzie is making a photogenic face at herself in the mirror.

  She stops making the face.

  She washes her hands again, and then starts putting on light makeup because she has decided that she is going to go out. She’s just going to go and see what this Loudermilk is up to. She’s going to make herself do it. When she’s in college in a couple years or in Switzerland or wherever next year she’ll probably tell someone a hysterically funny story about how she threw herself at this much older guy who barely gave her the time of day, in spite of his rampant sex addiction, and all the unconsummated hard-ons she inspired in him, who was this stupid jock poet who at the time seemed intensely talented, and it will be a pretty good story.

  Lizzie is done with her makeup and is rolling herself a j. She makes it strong and smokes half of it out her window. Then she goes downstairs and yells for whoever’s listening’s benefit that she’ll be back later on.

  On the sidewalk she smokes the other half.

  Lizzie thinks, In thirty seconds I shall be super fucked up!

  She reminds herself that what she needs to do is navigate toward the Common Lot, then position herself so as to be able to intercept her Billy Zane.

  Lizzie is delighted by the beauty of frozen nature around her. The world is so cold. She has no idea how long she spends on the sidewalk, staring up at an early star.

  Later she is downtown, and even later she and Loudermilk are standing together in the alley behind the Common Lot, and Loudermilk is saying, “I can’t fucking do this,” and he’s holding the back of her head and crushing it to his breastplate, to the center of his chest.

  Lizzie might mainly be thinking about how incredibly high she is or even how many times a nearly identical scene has played out before, but that doesn’t mean—even when Loudermilk departs abruptly with some shitty excuse about needing to go back inside so it doesn’t look like there’s anything between them—that it totally takes away from this epic moment.

  IV

  YOUR BEST READER

  Aboulomania

  They were brilliant, and they were fools, with

  Their relentless on-message responses and

  Pan-gender upper-middle-class perfectionism,

  Playing the role of rationalists in the extreme.

  However bright the scenarios of birdsong and

  Bells, forest-green winter wheat, silver-green

  Ornaments, spasms of doubt and blame, they

  Kept to the agreed-upon ops tempo with

  Admirable sangfroid. Creating mass affluence

  With windfalls for the fortunate few, they went

  On “research binges,” only pausi
ng to regroup

  When a small, hassled woman appeared with

  Afternoon treats of scotch and RingDings.

  Reporters pounced, even as soldiers quietly

  Applauded, in sudden graceful fits. They were

  Very big in personal hygiene after devouring

  A small alp of food. Their recommendations

  Were quirky—ask any yeoman worth his fat.

  Taped to the receiver was a sign in neat calligraphy

  That read, Leave the country within 48 hours or

  Suffer the consequences. It looked like a frail,

  Frail piece of fragrant cake, hanging there like

  A Marxist terrorist or euphoric business text.

  In 21st-century woodcuts, for example, and recent

  Pulse-pounding frescoes, pets become the new

  Children, even as a sadist and a nincompoop

  Embrace the nation-building challenge of the

  Decade, along with its infamous synthetic turf,

  Frozen potato products, a much reviled gigantic

  Concrete bowl, and lots and lots of sofas. I had

  A five-day hypomanic episode in the pampered,

  Perfect grass to catch a drop of solitude. But it

  Was frustrating to watch myself unconsciously

  Ad-libbing an extra hop into the movement. Or the

  Note of personal rancor—my own “Suez” moment.

  They were ibis eggcups! They were the behemoth

  Who snaps the ball, the multiple choices of a Scan-

  tron test, invisible celestial interlocutors, doctrinal

  Voids, economically independent soul mates! They

  Possessed hundreds of pictures of women giving

  Head and understood the weird drafts of freezer bags.

  Their displeasure over one CIA exercise was quite

  Outlandish and crashed emptily to earth. Here

  The laurels seem equally distributable . . .

  They were virtual Frenchmen; their limited public

  Visibility allowed them to practice head-shrinking

  In Oregon. They were domestic paragons! They

  Were, of course, pillaged almost immediately

  Afterward. Like some mild and generally useless

  Tips or misspelled figures from Celtic myths,

  They took the death of love as their special

  Premonition. They had to backtrack elegantly,

  Performing immediate dances with recyclables in

  Hot plastic ponchos, enduring everything from

  Laborious negotiations to painful rock music.

  They were lubricious and empty-headed robots by

  The time they got to me. It was a delicate day.

  I tried to think of a more à la mode shade for

  Operational flexibility and social bravado. The

  Old ways had taught cadets to be bullies, and I

  Fought the team’s traditional kelly green with the

  Knucklebones of saints, not to mention at least one

  Passive-aggressive screed. We’re talking about

  Post-hostilities control and embrace of uncertainty,

  A lack of curiosity about significant details. There’s

  A lot of money to pay for this and the absence of

  A president. There’s the residual anxiety. The rest

  Of it is assembled from surgical tubing and a

  Leather coin purse. It’s a Fragebogen, or question-

  naire. P.S. the aroma of mugwort is also v. nice here:

  You’re not going to tell me if it’s in the mail?

  (A) Yes. (B) No. (C) I could shave my head and

  Weave you a bracelet out of my hair? He looks

  Soft. He’s a resolute nonconductor of electricity.

  In spite of this, I still didn’t think the planned flow

  Was right. All the A-Team guys wanted to be in on

  Phase III, and now Georgia was the world’s only

  Consumption superpower, leaving decapitation

  Attacks and coulis-of-heirloom tomato appetizers

  As our last resort. I called it, “Operation Provide

  Comfort,” once unemployment reached 70 percent.

  The power vacuum led to looting and Disneyesque

  Water jets that bent. Those looking for detail said

  This would make some “things” more like “events.”

  Revenge killings, crime, chaos—all this was so

  Foreseeable, a result of changing the occupational

  Structure scattered over an ever-messier world.

  In elementary school we called it “playing.”

  We thought of it as standing on a banana peel,

  Awaiting our date with implosion, whether we

  Are to be a two-planet species or not. No “fee

  Simple” properties, no oranges or seed potatoes,

  No sixty-billion-dollar hemp or sunny jellied after-

  Life. We’ll dance but we won’t touch. We’ll touch

  But we won’t shop. The only way out is to make

  Foreigners more like us, which was when U.S.

  Marshals stopped being vague and started getting

  Recondite. This was the much-touted civilian-

  Military difference. We were persuading the

  Public to foot the bill for robot dogs and mice. We

  Lived in a period that disdains bold colors but

  Still, nearly every working group said, “Be like

  Us,” with a destructive self-confidence, from

  Her Connecticut friends to the least mercurial

  Son on the roster. We each appeared in an info-

  mercial astride a roll of polyethylene. What, then,

  Is the American, this new man, if all his powers

  Must be wielded through others? The solutions

  Will be centuries in coming, and I pant for life.

  —T. A. LOUDERMILK

  Thirty-Seven

  A Novelist

  Anton Beans pants. He sighs. He attempts to still his heart. Right now he is doing a kind of thing he has never done before. He is lying under Loudermilk’s bed and there is something sticky and probably chemically unstable affixed to his neck/skull base, just below his right ear. He is fairly certain it will turn out to be a used condom. Either that, or a mutant tapeworm parthenogenetically forged in the crucible of filth Loudermilk cultivates in all areas pertaining to his physical person, if not his very soul—if, for example, Anton Beans were a dualist, which Anton Beans is not.

  The main thing distracting Beans from his bacteria-stocked misery is his sense of sight, and his sense of sight is unfortunately filled with Loudermilk’s manically tapping heels, sheathed in hunter-green Ralph Lauren Polo socks. In addition to damage to his immune system and spinal alignment, Beans has suffered an in-depth intro to the private fantasia that is the mind of Loudermilk, his bizarre machinations plus inordinately well-developed self-regard. This exposure is likely to be permanently traumatizing in a way Beans had previously believed only the mishandling of infants during breastfeeding could be.

  Loudermilk is seated, hunched over what appears to be the discarded top of a water-warped Ping-Pong table, which is awkwardly supported by a stool and a cardboard box balanced on a plastic crate—though, Beans notes, there’s a perfectly serviceable card table shoved off to the side of the room. For hours now, Loudermilk has been reliving, via recorded audio, the secret history of his own inhumanity. Anton Beans now knows well what it sounds like not just to be made love to by Loudermilk but to be surveilled by him, and it’s starting to be difficult, most distressing of all, not to take Loudermilk just the littlest bit seriously, particularly given the fact that among the horde of anonymous co-eds, Beans thinks he can make out the whimpers and obscene requests of one or two female poets whose unthreatening competence in sestina and pantoum composition had previously led him to consider them as potential reviewers for his next book. There’s been some ma
niacal laughter from the desk, too, some cries of, “Stellar!” and “Fuck, yes!” which presumably indicate moments at which Loudermilk has astonished himself with his own intellectual prowess, or maybe the activities of his own dick, it’s so tragically challenging to tell the two apart. Beans isn’t, by the way, sure what Loudermilk is getting up to here, but the athletic lout does actually appear to be writing, drafting something Beans is afraid may well be a Loudermilkian take on the Great American Novel, which Beans supposes is probably just what the Great American Novel is supposed to be, anyhow.

  Now Loudermilk mutters, “‘A golden statue with long, swift arms; cheeks like beaten metal, gleaming and enticing, since expensive. Her braless tits were plums.’” He pauses. “No, fuck me. ‘Her sweet, tart tang was . . . plum’? Fuck.”

  Beans begins dry heaving.

  Loudermilk shakes his head. He is crossing some things out, chuckling and sighing. He replays a recent visit to Marta Hillary’s office hours.

  “You may sit.” Marta is alert, formal.

  There’s the sound of a zipper, movement of stuffs. The recorder is relocated.

  “So,” Marta says. “‘Aboulomania’?” She laughs dryly, as if she had months ago privately predicted that Loudermilk would write this very poem. Beans reflects, not without a snap of rage, that she does not seem entirely displeased—though whether Marta is in larger part satisfied with her own prognostication or with Loudermilk is by no means certain. She has not, after all, secured her current status through self-abnegation. “Otherwise known as pathological indecisiveness. A disorder in which the patient is beset with anxiety and mental anguish, overwhelmed by the possibility that all decisions lead to uncertain ends. See also, paralysis by analysis. A terrible thing, to be sure, but also, one must imagine, fairly common, given the diversity of choice in the postindustrial world.” Marta pauses. “I thought the conversation in class was fine. It was a bit limited but essentially fine. I wanted to offer a few mechanical remarks.”