by Steve Finbow
more than Z played with cock juggled emotions
more than juggled balls
but that’s it, isn’t it?
the chase,
the game,
the play
who can tell someone will change you irrevocably? who
can say it will be a or b or c or Z
wasn’t looking for it
it came
hadn’t planned to fall in love hadn’t
planned to kill a man
or two
never three
stepping over
crossing line
Z went followed
not just physically,
geographically,
but mentally, emotionally
—Z’d say,
Z’d call
listen in & nod not wanting to disappoint,
not wanting exclusion,
exclusivity
how had it come to this?
a puppet,
a zombie,
an automaton,
a dangling, shuffling, unthinking thing;
a beast of nothingness,
a void,
a palimpsest to be written over—
& all the words,
in millions of lines, read
“obsession”
what Z asked, answered in positive
loved Z
would do anything for Z
yes, even that
above, bats engulf clouds of moths flying towards the moon
& are themselves snapped up by a monstrous jaw
year after,
ten months after death of first,
called Z
day after killed second
Z hung up
waited & called again
no answer
knot in stomach became basketball,
basketball filled with boiling mercury,
writhing cords of doubt & worry
called again
no answer
tried Z’s cell
called Z’s home
no answer
got in car,
drove to apartment
saw Z’s car
waited & waited
knocked on door no answer
rang bell no answer
tried key Z’d given
no joy no luck no chance
no answer
prowled around area
is that Z? was that Z?
drove back
waited & waited
at last,
door opened
Z got into another car
headed out followed along coast highway
to left,
miles & miles of ocean
miles & miles of land
to right
gas stations diners trees birds
sky raggedy with clouds
splash of dark red urine on windscreen
sun moving glacially thru heavens
hell
rundown motel
Z drove in
got out of car
ankle bracelet glistening in sun
door opened
dark chevron & gone
imagine
imagination reared up, angry cobra,
baring twin fangs of obsession & possession, spitting venom of jealousy
Z went in
waited ten minutes max
walked up to window
curtains closed
nothing to see
nothing to hear
but do but did but will
see Z on knees Hear slurp
of lube see Z’s mouth
open hear Z moan see
muscular thighs strain with it hear
slap of groin on buttock see
sweat on upper lip hear
thrust of flesh in flesh holes
stretched tight around see
nape of Z’s neck flush hear
abandoned groan of orgasm see
door open hear
Z’s laughter see
wheelspin of Z’s whitewalls,
dust cloaking escape
knock on door, wait for it to open hear
crackpopcrack of nasal bone knee to groin, cock still hard
see red make red feel red
blood around blood on walls & mirror, blood
on bedspread & pillows, blood in mouth & eyes,
bloodfuel of terrible union…
take wallet from table, flip it open—
some kind of private detective,
private eye,
private dick
whatever whenever
all Z ever had to do was…
The Observed
…look at the man, said,
“This isn’t my mother.”
He looked at a clipboard as if taking roll call, taking inventory,
smiled with his tight mouth not his beady eyes, said,
“I can assure you, miss, that it is.”
“Has my father seen her? It?”
“Yes, he was here yesterday when your mother arrived.”
“That,” I said pointing at the body in the dark wood casket
resting on the glowing fabric, “is not my mother.
My mother has…” And then I realized I couldn’t remember.
I remembered what she did,
not who she was.
I remembered her actions not her features. Her verbs
not her nouns. No adjectives, no adverbs. Definitely no
possessives. All parentheses. My father kept no photographs
of her, no videos. Like the generals and politicians
disappeared from Soviet history,
whitewashed,
Photoshopped out of all documents.
Just like Clementis ever absent from Gottwald’s side,
Gottwald, wearing Clementis’s fur hat,
now all alone on a balcony overlooking Old Town Square,
Prague 1948.
Did she have blonde hair, or brown,
or red, or black? Did she have
any beauty spots or scars?
What color were her eyes?
The last time I’d seen her, I was ten,
two men dressed all in white
carrying her through the house on a stretcher.
And I’d shouted at them to stop, thinking
they were angels taking her to heaven.
Not that I believe in heaven. Or hell. X believes
hell is a slow accumulation of regret. X would quote Wilde,
“One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead.”
In that case,
if that were true,
heaven should be an accretion of satisfaction,
of pleasure, joy, and bliss. Not so.
“Who falls from all he knows of bliss, Cares little into what abyss.”
My father stepped out from under the stairs, hurried them up,
rushed me back into my room.
My room of pink and black,
of INXS and Jane’s Addiction,
of preppy shoes and draws stuffed with satin thongs.
He tried to explain. But how could he?
Tried to stop me crying.
The last time I remember doing so.
He spent a week traveling between wherever my mother was and home.
Between sanity and madness—
whichever way around. After that time,
something snapped inside me,
damming the tears, holding back the memories until,
after a succession of gifts and weekends away with my father and his girlfriends,
I stopped thinking about my mother.
Just like that.
Just.
Like.
That.
Coldness was always within me, a diamond
wrapped in furs, but this is when and where it started to grow,
to become colder, the many facets smoothing over
into one smooth orb of indiffe
rence,
a frozen core,
my frigid reactor.
Siberia instead of
California.
Now here she was. Or wasn’t.
I stared into the casket. Blonde hair. Blue eyes.
Skin made up to look tanned. Frown lines—
markings on a badly drawn map. Small
spider webs of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes
and mouth. A tarantula hiding within.
I just couldn’t remember.
Could not.
Sucked on my tongue,
looked at my nails,
blood and glitter.
“Thank you,”
I said to the man and stepped out of the office, the building,
into the street where I sat on the curb waiting for Raoul to return.
Cleaners and police prowl cars my only company.
After twenty minutes,
I saw the dark green Range Rover slowly turn
into the street. I sat and waited for it to stop.
Opened the door, got in, holding my skirt down, pressing
it against my sweating thighs. Saw Raoul
steal a glance. Sat knock-kneed
all the way home. From that day on,
Raoul was mine. A glimmer
of lace, a flash
of thigh, a hint
of nipple.
I think it’s called fetishization.
Raoul had a fetish for my panties, my
legs, my breasts to be; he partialized me
but would never have me whole.
No one would have me
whole.
In the four years before I left home,
I never let him touch me, not so much as a kiss.
I’d wait until he was in the hallway, my
father ready to pay him, and I’d
climb the stairs in a mini denim skirt, a thong beneath—
different days different colors of the rainbow, or I’d
sunbathe by the pool while Raoul weeded and planted, my
blooming and budding body glistening with oils,
bikini bottoms hiked up, bikini tops hiked down.
It was around that time that I first caught a glimpse of the tail,
heard its slap and rattle, smelled the thing,
saw the vertebral imprints on the window, in the Zen garden,
on the billboards on our journeys out of town…
Lillianne left about a year after my mother’s funeral,
telling my father she was leaving Raoul, leaving
the city, the state, the country, returning
to wherever it was she was from south of the Rio Grande. That place
of mystery and emptiness, of
death and dereliction, of
tortillas, of
peyote madness.
When my father had asked why,
she had told him that Raoul had started drinking, abusing
her, refusing to sleep in the same bed, spending
his free time locked in a back room,
and she had found a collection of thongs all the colors
of the rainbow that certainly weren’t hers,
and a silver bikini stained with suntan lotion. My father
kept Raoul on out of pity and laziness.
Not suspecting.
In that time,
Raoul killed two men for me.
Let me watch.
Let me savor.
I love men. I hate them.
It’s not my father’s fault. I don’t blame my mother.
Men excite me and then they bore me in rapid succession.
Learning the tricks, Raoul lasted longer than most.
I imagine him now,
arthritis from all those masturbation marathons—
imagining me on my knees sucking his aching cock;
imagining me on my knees, my ass impaled on his bulging prick,
the wafts of suntan lotion mixed with my shit, my blood;
me on my knees straddling his face while he licks and flicks
my pulsating clit, me
gripping him hard and harder.
I stand in front of the full-length mirror
applying makeup to my busted face. My jaw,
swollen and bruised, a slice of eggplant. The brassknuckles
a surprising touch. Cute. I layer on the concealer,
feeling the slow pain beneath my fingers. I pick
up my dress from the floor, snatch
up my black satin thong and throw it on the bed, wondering
if X has gone forever this time. I stare
in the mirror, trace the smooth circular scar
on my upper left arm, a full moon
in a pink sky in the morning,
or the beginning of a gum bubble, a palimpsest
of skin over his name.
X said that was it. That was the last time.
That he couldn’t sleep because of the bodies piled up
in his memory. Couldn’t close
his eyes without seeing smashed skulls, forked eyes, swollen
and bloodied knees. I gave him The Gourd’s golf bag
in which to conceal the body parts,
take it out of the condo, dispose of it somewhere.
And X had.
And I’d thought he’d gone.
Then a knock on my door. I opened it
and X hit me before I could say anything.
Hit me again on the way down. Said,
“It’s over. Don’t follow me.
And if you stick The Gourd on me,
I’ll kill him,
mail you his cock.”
I smiled through the pain, said,
“You will never be able to leave me.
Go away. You will never
be able to stop.
Don’t come back.
Don’t. Come back.”
“Watch me,” he said.
And through clenched teeth, I said,
“I will.”
I no longer need him.
I no longer needed him.
I did and I didn’t. Just kept coming
back for more. Just kept coming
back for less.
I’d picked him out at a fundraiser. Cruel eyes
burning into me. Nervous,
but with desire not fear. Still,
watching, following.
Pressed that piece of paper into his hand—
the secret combination. The thing was,
the thing is, I came kind of addicted
to his willingness, to his stories of how and where but never why,
to the flecks of blood on his shirts—constellations of fear.
We revolved around each other,
a binary system, like Charon and Pluto, orbiting
a central mass made up of violence and desire.
We revolve around each other.
At the time, bored, I needed to get rid of the man I was with,
not just for the night, for all time.
My Jewboy husband—short on schlong, long
in the hardening, clumsy in the saddle, agile
in the market—the ultimate goal,
but I thought X might need a little practice, a few easy targets,
get rid of a couple of hangers on.
I’d had my fun,
had my money,
had my chances. But some don’t
take the hint. It had taken a year
but my husband had signed half of it over,
the cash, the house,
the cars, the paintings.
I let him watch while others fucked me, him not
knowing I was auditioning for potential murderers, men
I could blackmail. But the new one, I didn’t much need
to hustle. I gave and then I dangled. Showed
and then stashed. I’d grown up a little since Raoul.
I like it hard, abrasive, abusive if it’s th
e real thing.
The first man I asked him to off was that lame duck of a politician—
rundown, crushed and stuck—
just like our relationship. The second,
an ex-lover who couldn’t take “fuck off and die” for an answer.
I keep the remains of his toes in a jar, use them
as oracle bones to tell my future—or his—
eenie, meenie, minie, moe,
I know where he’s going to go.
A small motel on the way to LA,
then on to that bar for a drink.
I pick up the phone, call the private dick
I’ve hired to find him.
To follow.
Dial The Gourd’s number, say,
“It’s me. I’m in Barstow. Don’t ask.
He’s left again, heading south.
I’m going to the roadhouse.
There’s a bar in Rancho Cucamonga
it’s called…
The Slaughterhouse Revisited
…the slaughterhouse,
on road to city of angels—
devil of a place—badly need
a drink
flopped out in small motel once stayed in with Z magic fingers,
cable porn, club sandwich
& mickey’s big mouths
stolen won’t start jimmy window
of motor behind, smash ignition tumbler,
yank out some stuff, take out knife,
strip ends of two wires most likely
off—
a spastic ice skater sliding all over the place
until get used to car’s rock & roll
nice
start enjoying the ride am there already
park car down side road—
might come in handy
look in rear-view mirror &,
with tattooed fingers,
comb back long dark locks
scar above right eye twitches,
run thumb along it until it is raw & shiny
straighten inverted-cross necklace,
undo button on white linen shirt
out of car & striding towards the slaughterhouse
need a beer
wondering if Z’s sent anyone
staring in mirror at busted face while speed dialing prick
of ugly private eye Z’s screwing
the slaughterhouse—windowless pit on sun-raked street
some joker’s stolen the s from sign so it reads the laughterhouse
smile
push open door
some guys in this place are depleted uranium—
hard & dense
it’s early, it’s not even eleven, bar crowded
men lining bar—petrified forest of frazzled drinkers
no one stirs
point at stella tap & behind barman to bottle of pappy van winkle
sit down at table,
take paperback from back pocket of jeans –sunset debris…
barman—one-eyed, one-legged, one-armed, once-upon-a-time
