Penguin had a kind of laid-back ease and assurance that’s not quite like him as he spoke to me and Lambert. “I could tell from her voice she was upset,” he said. “She asked, ‘Don’t you think that’s weird?’ to which I replied, ‘Yes, very weird.’ Saying yes appeared to bond us in some way, as though I’d uttered a secret password for admission to a guild or a lodge. She spoke more softly now, almost secretively, her voice a little lower and a little huskier than usual, her mouth closer to the receiver’s mouthpiece it seemed. ‘No telling what could happen,’ she said, almost whispering.’ I answered, ‘Yes, no telling what could happen.’”
Drennette again made the point, Penguin said, that none of the balloons had gone away, that the three still hung in the air above the parade snare’s container, hung there as though staring at her she went so far as to say. “‘It’s eerie,’ she said,” he said. “‘I’ve tried closing my eyes and opening them again, thinking maybe they’d be gone when I opened them, hoping they’d be gone when I opened them, but they were still there. I’ve tried leaving the room, going to another room for a while and then coming back, hoping they’d be gone when I came back, but they were still there when I came back.’”
Penguin went from laid-back to bursting when he got to this point, bursting to tell us what she said next and what happened, much more his uncontainable self. Her voice was still low and intimate, he said, he and she still members of whatever guild or lodge or secret society he’d been admitted into. We were at Lambert’s place, drinking beer. Lambert interrupted to ask if Penguin and I would like another, to which we both said yes, and when he came back from the kitchen with three fresh beers Penguin continued.
“‘They stare at me like stalkers, these three,’ she whispered into the phone, her voice husky but vulnerable too,” Penguin told us. “Like I said before, I could tell she was upset, though it’s not like her to show that kind of thing and she tried to make herself sound nonplussed and merely observational even when saying things like ‘No telling what could happen’ and ‘It’s eerie.’” He fell silent, took a sip of his beer and gazed out Lambert’s living room window, taking in the scene outside, the tops of palm trees and the sky mainly, as though the key to what happened next lay somewhere in the clouds. Lambert and I held our tongues.
“Then suddenly, after she said that, the thing about the balloons looking at her like stalkers, she paused a moment before saying, in a tone and with an inflection I’ve never heard her use before, her mouth even closer to the phone’s mouthpiece it seemed, ‘That’s why I called you.’ After saying that, she paused again, ever so slightly, then asked, her voice not as low now, girlish, ‘Can you come over?’”
Penguin fell silent again and gazed out the living room window again, again as though looking for an answer in the clouds, taking one sip from his beer and then another and then another. Lambert and I held our tongues again but Penguin’s silence lasted longer this time. Finally, when it looked like he’d never speak again, I asked, “Then what happened?”
“I went over, of course,” Penguin answered, immediately falling silent again.
The silence hung there for a while and then Lambert asked, “And then what happened?”
“I’m not the kiss-and-tell type,” was all Penguin would say, gazing out the living room window at the tops of palm trees and the sky.
We drank more beer as the afternoon wore on, a lot more beer, and all three of us got pretty loose. No matter how loose he got and no matter how much Lambert and I pressed him, Penguin would only say about what went on after he went over to Drennette’s, “I’m not the kiss-and-tell type.”
Yours,
N.
6.V.84
Dear Angel of Dust,
Penguin and Drennette haven’t shown any sign that anything happened. Since him telling me and Lambert about her calling him up and asking him over we’ve been looking to see if there’s anything new in their way with each other. I can’t say that anything has changed. They still go about their business as before. Last night at rehearsal Lambert even called up “Drennethology,” thinking maybe there’d be some blush or some other such telling sign or perhaps a more passionate approach to the piece by him or by her or by both, a new emotion brought to it. No such difference. They were nothing if not businesslike, cool technicians to the point I thought their coolness might be a sign that something had happened. “Maybe what happened is that nothing happened,” Lambert said later as he and I talked after rehearsal. “Or maybe they’re trying to hide the fact that something did,” I said right away.
Time will tell. In the meantime, I’m still wondering how to make good on Dredj’s “Copacetic Syncope,” struggling with how to make good on it. The squint I was beset by during a cowrie shell attack way back comes back of late, conducing to a Rasta koan or equation, faraway French horn filiating Far-Eye trombone. Processionality’s call summons a fetch and a furthering, a fromness (Rico, Man from Wareika) and a forwarding (Rico, That Man Is Forward) so-near-so-far reticence gets or doesn’t get but won’t gainsay, all the sway of gathered cloth folding it in. I know what Dredj means by so-near-so-far, which leaves all the more to be said for so-far-so-far. Squint wants to sing something we see best at a distance. I squint and I can barely see, blown particulates’ blind beneficiary, musk’s near rhyme with dust the refrain I’d ply, caroling dark but chorusing light.
It’s not that I’ve decided to add a trombone, much less that I’ve decided on reggae telemetrics, much less the hurry-up sound of ska. I’d like that sense of going somewhere but I’m not sure I trust it. I like the diffuse, frustrated reflectivity brass imposes on Far-Eye reach, more audible in the strainin’-up sound of French horn than on trombone but a shared come-so-far-to-say-it sonic inheritance nonetheless. Brass familiarity, brass familiality, is maybe all I’m getting at, a strained familiarity or a strained familiality announcing exodus or exile in the case of either horn. It was, after all, “I can’t be strainin’-up here” Strainin’-up Mary used to say.
As ever,
N.
11.V.84
Dear Angel of Dust,
“It’s not,” Penguin was saying, “that I don’t like a woman whose eyes take you in and take you deep, so deep you think you’ll drown, you’ll never get out. I’m not saying sparkle that far down in her eyes doesn’t dazzle, dark though the mascara might make it, a highlight heteronymically come to the fore.” The three of us—him, Lambert and I—were in Lambert’s car, heading to Dem Bones, a barbecue place in Westwood we like. Lambert and I were in front. Penguin sat in the back seat. We’d been going along quietly when out of the blue he began talking. Lambert kept his eyes on the road and I kept looking straight ahead as well. “It’s not,” Penguin continued, “that I don’t like a woman the shape of whose nose is nothing if not divinatory signage, the harbinger of heavenly form, that I don’t like a woman whose lips are full and whose mouth pouty, that I don’t like her mouth brimming with teeth and gums, protruding toward a kiss it forever invites or anticipates.”
“Who said it was?” was on the tip of my tongue but I let it stay there, sensing Penguin was in a certain space we shouldn’t intrude on. Lambert appeared to think likewise. We both kept quiet and kept our eyes on the road.
“I’m not saying there were no balloons there,” he continued, “that she lured me there under false pretenses. It’s not that it wasn’t exactly the way she said on the phone, not that the three balloons weren’t still there, hovering above the parade snare’s container, inscribed with exactly the words she had told me, read to me, over the phone. I’m not saying I didn’t blink my eyes and then close my eyes for a while, as she had, to see if they’d go away, not saying they went away and were not still there when I opened my eyes again, just the way she had said it had been with her. No, I’m not saying that. That’s not what I’m saying. No way was it that the wine she offered wasn’t good, great in fact, exactly my favorite white, sauvignon
blanc, chilled just right to go with the oysters on the half shell she also offered.” He paused, savoring the memory of the oysters and wine it seemed to me. Lambert and I remained silent. I looked out the window at a particularly nice row of palm trees, lost in that somewhat until noticing Penguin was speaking again.
“What I’m saying isn’t that I don’t like the kind of incense she likes,” he was saying, “those green neroli sticks the Vedanta Society sells, the ones that have a kind of funkiness to them, a kind of bootiliness or bootiness to them. I don’t mean that the smell of that smoke, mixed with that of the scented candles she had burning, the smell of perfume on her neck and a very slight waft of sweat, didn’t almost take me out. No, I’m not saying that.” He paused before continuing, “It’s not that I don’t like standing pelvis to pelvis with arms around each other, that thrusting and grinding pelvis to pelvis isn’t for me. I don’t mean to say I don’t like the feel and taste of her tongue, her tongue feeling and tasting my tongue. No, I’m not saying there was anything not to like about her tongue groping and my tongue groping back, anything wrong with the kiss getting deep and slow and a little bit sloppy. I’m not saying that.” He paused again, caught up in his own thoughts it felt like, gazing blankly out the window I would’ve sworn. Lambert and I continued to hold our tongues, continued to keep our eyes straight ahead.
“I’m not saying,” Penguin said when he resumed speaking, “that I don’t welcome the rotundity of pendant hips in the palms of my hands, that I’m averse to holding her with one of my legs between hers and one of hers between mine. It’s not that a pinched waist and a generous, low-hanging ass don’t speak to me. No, that’s not what I’m saying. No, I’m not saying that. It’s not that I’m immune to her nipples hardening against my chest, that her nipple pressed hard against my tongue, stiff between my teeth and lips, doesn’t get to me. That I don’t like her teeth and tongue on my earlobe and her low, husky voice issuing coarse demands and crude encouragement, whispering sweet endearments as well, is most definitely not what I’m saying. I’m also not saying I don’t like the thick hair between her legs or the feel of it against my thigh, that I don’t like the wetness of what’s underneath it wetting my thigh.” He paused.
Lambert and I continued to think it was best not to speak or to turn our heads and look at him. Lambert kept his eyes on the road and I mostly did so too, though I did turn my head and look out the window from time to time. We were coming upon a Carpeteria store on our right as Penguin left off speaking, the company’s trademark Aladdin’s lamp–style genie looming twenty feet tall atop the store. Grinning, turbanned, holding a large roll of carpet above its head, it never fails to catch my eye and it did so again this time. I turned my head and stared up at it as we passed.
It felt like Penguin was gathering his thoughts, deeper in thought. When he resumed speaking he began by saying, “It’s not that I don’t like a woman who likes to be gone down on.” When Lambert and I heard this we both had the same thought. Lambert kept his eyes on the road but I turned my head to look at Penguin as the two of us said at the same time, “Careful, man. You’re telling us way more than we need to know.” I left it at that but Lambert went on, “Don’t tell us something you’re gonna regret telling us.”
Penguin’s eyes were on the road ahead and did not meet mine. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t so much as given the genie a glance. He had an intent look on his face, as though he spoke not on a need-to-know but a need-to-tell basis. “It’s not,” he went back to what he’d been saying before we broke in, “that I don’t like a woman who likes to be gone down on from behind, her ass cleft recruiting one’s nose as one’s tongue slips between the lips between her legs. I’m not saying I mind her turning over after a while and lying on her back, pulling me up between her legs and on top of her, reaching down and sliding me in. No, I’m not saying that.” This was a far cry from “I’m not the kiss-and-tell type,” so far from it he might as well have been blowing a horn, blowing the oboe, the high boy, the high would, piping for all heaven, earth and hell to hear, no matter he spoke softly, calmly, self-possessed, giving an all too graphic account of what had gone on between him and Drennette. Had balloons begun to emerge from his mouth I wouldn’t have been surprised.
I turned my head and looked forward again, went back to looking straight ahead. There was no stopping him I could see. I looked out the window. We were on Santa Monica now, the street Dem Bones is on. “It’s not that I mind being told it feels good and to keep doing it,” he continued, “that I’ve got a big one, a really hard one, a really stiff one and I know how to use it, that she likes the way it fills her, that between her legs is where I belong. No, it’s not that. I’m not denying the word ‘big,’ the word ‘hard’ and the word ‘stiff’ never sounded so good, that they never wielded more magic.” No, there was no stopping him. Words, it was clear, were his high horn, theirs the horn’s piercing, penetrant cry. “It’s not that I don’t care for her gripping my hips while I’m between her legs,” he was now saying, “spreading my cheeks to finger my ass before bringing her finger up to my nose for me to sniff. No, it’s absolutely not that. I’m not saying I’ve got anything against her asking, while doing that, ‘Why are we so smelly?’ in her you’ve-been-a-bad-boy voice. I’m not saying that at all.”
Let me be clear that there was nothing the least bit lascivious or salacious about the way Penguin spoke. He spoke with absolute sobriety and equanimity, not exactly dispassionately but collectedly, even as the events of which he spoke built, crescendoed and peaked. “It’s not,” he said, “that I don’t like it when her body tightens and it all begins to build to the release we’ve been moving toward, that I don’t like the way her body spasms, bucks and quakes while she tightens her embrace of me and I tighten mine of her, that I’ve got anything against the feeling of something from deep down and inside being drawn out of me, some inmost extenuation, my very self maybe, not that I’d rather she not moan and, shortening my name to ‘Pen,’ quietly call it while this goes on.”
Penguin didn’t stop there. He paused but he didn’t stop. He became all the more sober, somber even, certainly serious, meditative, solemn I could feel. I took my eyes from the road and turned and looked at him there in the back seat. As he began to speak again he tilted his head like a bird, looking askance at some new conundrum it seemed, aggrieved and quizzical at the world’s illogic. “What it is,” he said, “is that the Drennette all this happened with wasn’t Drennette, that it happening, necessary no doubt, was insufficient. The Drennette I did all this with and who did all this with me wasn’t her. The kissing and the caressing, the whispers and the getting wet, the wafting and the thrusting and the squeezing, the muscle contractions and the getting wetter yet were not the utmost her I wanted, the utmost her I still want, the inmost her it perhaps is I long for and that I still long for.”
He fell silent. His eyes hadn’t met mine when I turned to look at him and they still didn’t meet mine. Had he been talking to us or to himself I wondered and so said nothing. Lambert, however, eyes ahead and on the road still, cleared his throat and spoke up, speaking from hard experience it appeared, delivering a hard-won truth. “Beauty does that,” he said, “especially outer and inner beauty combined, exactly the sort it is Drennette has. It makes us see things. It makes us see what can’t be touched. It hawks the intangible. No matter how material, no matter how palpable it seems, no matter the low-buttocked angel a rung or two above us leading the way it appears to be, it can’t be touched. Tread lightly. Don’t go thinking you can grab it, have it, hold it. You can look but ultimately you can’t touch.” It was a sobering thought.
Penguin, less rather than more sober on the heels of Lambert’s remarks, spoke with barely damped passion. “But she was right there,” he said in a sotto voce cry, “me pressed up against her, her pressed up against me, there but not there, me in her arms and she in mine but not there, not the”—he paused, chasing a thought, reaching fo
r a word—“Drennethological Drennette I so wanted and still want. I was surrounded by water but thirsty, thirsty in the middle of the sea. Beauty was indeed water spiked with salt, water I could look at, not drink. Proximity, tangibility, was the bait on beauty’s hook.”
Penguin fell silent again, lost in thought it seemed, at a loss as to where what he’d said left him. He came out of it quickly and at last his eyes met mine. He turned his head and looked toward Lambert, whose attention was on pulling into an empty parking space that, luckily, was almost directly in front of Dem Bones, just a few spaces farther up from it. It was clear to me that, no matter whether Penguin had been talking to himself or to us earlier, it was to us he’d been talking this last little while and that from us he wanted a response. Having looked toward Lambert, he looked back at me, but I myself was at a loss, unsure how to take up with what I was still afraid he’d later regret having told us.
Met by my silence, Penguin looked back toward Lambert, who by this time had pulled into the parking space, backed up a little, gone forward again straightening out the car, backed up again a bit, turned off the engine and begun to open his door. He looked back over his shoulder at both of us and said, “We’re here. I’m hungry. Let’s go eat.”
Late Arcade Page 17
