by Bruce Bauman
Her speaking voice sounds like a clarinet with a cigarette in its mouthpiece. She was born and raised Amanda Akin in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. She left at eighteen and met Alchemy at Juilliard. I don’t volunteer that we had a coupla interns from Juilliard when I was at Performing Arts and I hated the bastids.
“Alchemy was only seventeen when he started. Finished at twenty. I left because I couldn’t take the hypocrisy, and despite the lip service, it wasn’t as progressive as I’d imagined. Guys were still getting the preferential treatment and I was just getting buzzed by Sally Timms and Kim Gordon, and the forevers like Marianne Faithfull and Chrissie Hynde. I transferred to CalArts. Much hipper and less testosterone heavy.”
Alchemy never breathed a syllable about the diploma stuffed in his back pocket ’cause he thought it would ruin his rock cred.
“Bet he also never told you he joined the army?”
“Fuck no. He seems like a, pu—ah—”
“Pussy? I got your number Mr. Ricky-Tough-Guy.” So she did. “Yes, he enlisted. When Salome freaked again, they had to let him out before his time was up.”
That almost explained his crazy “yes and no” answer about being in war. I’m beginning to see this guy is full of surprises. When I ask him later about this army shit, he starts lecturing me that everyone should serve in the army or do some kind of service as their patriotic duty.
We plan to start rehearsing later in the week. The first rehearsal I pick up my Strat ’cause I ain’t no second-fiddle bass player to a chick. Absurda hooks up, too, and eyes me like “You wanna go?” so I start playing and she mimics whatever I do. Then she starts leading, and, well, I got to give it to her, she could flat-out scorch that baby. First her Flying V and then the Winged Nightingale that Fender made for her. Falstaffa fronts me the money for a bass. I learn to love it.
Alchemy and me are crashing over the Pantera, though he ain’t here that often. He never had no problems bouncing from bed to bed. He told me that growing up with Salome made him feel like no place and every place was home. You know the phrase “any port in a storm”? For Alchy, it was just “any port.” He claimed he found something beautiful in every woman and that gave him comfort and hope. It sounds like a load, but it wasn’t. And even when he was rich and went loopy over Laluna and moved to Topanga, he didn’t feel totally settled.
A coupla weeks later, me and Alchy’s drinking down at the Pantera. I been thinking about scoping him on Absurda, only he beats me to it.
“So, are you going to move on Absurda or not? Better do it before long, or it’ll be too late.”
“Whataya mean?”
“Come on, man, I see the way you’re lusting for her.”
I despised him when he spoke like he had that superior insight from a voice that told him all. “You or Lux ain’t done her?”
“Can’t speak for Lux, but they are certainly not together now. As for me, nope, not even a kiss.”
“Why? ’Cause she done so many guys?”
“If my mom heard you say something so dim-witted and sexist, she’d squeeze your nuts so hard they’d turn to Silly Putty. The rules of getting laid: Approach sex with some sensitivity. Women have a right to fuck as much as we do without being called whatever epithets flash into your head. And remember this, if done right, they enjoy it as much or even more than we do.”
“Scratch the Alchemy doubletalk an’ answer my question.”
“Okay, I ‘ain’t done’ her. So go for it, but remember, she’s like my soul sister. I’ll be watching.”
A couple weeks later after we been rehearsing all night, she and me head down to Tacos Por Favor and I’m stuffing my face. I notice she hardly eats, and I ask her, “You a puker or just don’t like food?”
“Neither. I get ninety percent of my calories from gin and cigarettes …” She licks them cat’s lips a hers and meows, “the other ten percent from hot, creamy cum. Now Ricky, can I have a taste?” and she eyes my enchiladas but I don’t think that’s what she means. She pulls out two hits of X and sticks one right on my tongue. We hook up for the first time. It was hot. I mean hot. We done shit I never done before. I’m dissin’ myself by admitting this, but hell, I was a kid and not that experienced.
We’d ended up at her room in the house she shares with a bunch of losers in this old three-story firetrap in the Rampart district. I am starting to see L.A. is huge, and there are hoods like Rampart, which feels sorta like Flushin’. The TV makes the whole place out to be either Beverly Hills or Compton. Ain’t true at all.
The next morning she is dressing to take off to her waitressing job at Barneys in West Hollywood, I ask, “We an article now?”
She grins and shakes her head, “No, we’re a preposition …”
“What?”
“You meant an item, not an article. Never mind. What do you want us to be?”
“A particle … If ya promise not to go all teachy on me ’cause a the way I talk.”
She kisses me and holds my hand, Catholic school girlie–like. “I won’t do that to you, Ricky.” She never got used to calling me Ambitious, and she’s the only person, after I get to L.A., who I let call me Ricky.
A few months later, I finished my last drop for Marty at around 5 A.M., that’s how I was earning my keep, and I’m gonna crash at the Pantera that night rather than head to Absurda’s. Alchy, he wanted zip to do with that shit, and because he’s allowed Falstaffa and Marty the privilege of being in his inner circle, he don’t have to earn his keep. The Pantera was closed so it was just me and Marty at the bar drinking. Get the Fuck Over Here is snoring on the floor. Falstaffa is upstairs sleeping, and we figure Alchemy has found himself another bed for the night. About three beers in, Marty asks, “How’s it hanging between you and Absurda?” His voice punches out like he’s six feet, not some putz who comes up to my knees.
“Hangin’.”
“You know why Alchemy named her Absurda Nightingale?”
“Yeah, ’cause of the crazy bird squeals she gets from her guitar.”
“More like the squeals she makes when she’s sucking on some guy’s bazooka. And she’s sucked plenty.”
“Yo, dwarf dick, tell me she done you.”
“Meaty enough so I deep-throated her ’til she gagged. Absurda, she’s so horny, she fucks like a man.”
Suddenly, there’s a spitting noise in the doorway that leads up to the apartment. Marty starts trembling, bleating, “Alchemy, please! I was just shittin’ him. You knew I was just fuckin’ with you, Ambitious, right?”
Alchemy calmly strides over. Marty is shivering. Alchemy lays his hand on top of Marty’s head. He holds it there. Marty is bug-eyed. Not breathing. Alchemy coolly says to me, “Pack up. We’re leaving.” He slides his hand down Marty’s forehead and over his eyes and gently closes the lids.
19
THE MOSES CHRONICLES (2001)
Just a Family Affair
Alchemy parked the Focus in the driveway, and Moses felt his body relax. He was glad to be home. He cherished the womb-like solace he found in the sanctuary of his and Jay’s olive green stucco house.
From the small front yard Moses called out, but Jay didn’t respond. His cell phone rang. Moses answered it. “Andrew Pullham-Large for Alchemy.” Moses tossed Alchemy the phone and hurried inside, his panic meter rising. He found Jay asleep in their bedroom. A barely touched bottle of water, a half-filled glass of white wine, and her mother’s jeweled pillbox containing a dozen or so of his Xanax sat atop the wooden bedside table. Her body expanded and contracted with her slow, sleeping breaths. Moses sat on the bed beside her and gently rubbed her tanned shoulder.
Her lids opened, glazed over by a film of white plasma. Her tongue sought to dampen her dry lips.
“Jay, what the hell is going on?” He eyed the pillbox.
She placed her hand in his. “Oh, I’m just scared and I love you so much and …”
“It’s going to be all right.” He gently touched her cheek with his right hand. She inch
ed herself upright and leaned back against the pillows. She reached limply for the bottled water. Moses handed it to her. Jay tilted her head slightly upward, shook her hair so it flung back, and took a very long drink before she spoke.
“It’s not that. Well, yes, it is that. Is he here?”
“Yeah, outside, on the phone.”
“Moses, I have to tell you something. Did he …” She exhaled, then exhaled again even more deeply. Her hands began to shake. She released her hands and drank more water. Moses took her hands in his and steadied her. Only then did he begin to comprehend this space between sounds and what they intimated—
“You and him?”
“It was nothing. Meaningless. Insignificant.”
“A one-night thing?”
“It was so not serious.”
“When?”
“It started before I met you.”
“And ended?”
“When I met you.”
“How soon after we met?”
“Soon. I don’t remember exactly. Soon.”
Jay, who had remained free from the increasingly mangled sexual web of his “family” was now intractably and unalterably linked to Alchemy in the one way he could never have imagined, and now could never forget.
“Kasbah rented the Dresden for a party and Randy Sheik invited me and introduced me to him because of the art connection.”
He stopped hearing her words and descended into the suffocating space of a daymare.
Moving with a graceful locomotion that radiates sex, he approaches her at the Chateau Marmont bar for what she knows will be the last time. Before they finish the second drink, they’ve tongued their way to an upstairs room, where immediately his mouth sucks her ass. He whispers—I want you here. The head of his “most glorious cock in rock” reaches virgin spaces. Moments later, under the shower’s driving water, she takes him inside her mouth. Finally, hungrier than she’s ever been to be fucked—she feels him inside her—each thrust a lightning shock of pleasure. She comes and comes again and again. And again. And so does he. No man has come inside her so many times in one night. No one ever will again.
“Hey, Mose, your mom, Hannah, is on the cell phone,” Alchemy calls from the front of the house.
In the morning they share champagne. She wants him one more time. She holds him inside her, fingers digging deep into his flesh, wishing the moment would never end.
The landline rang and the answering machine picked up. “It’s Sidonna Cherry. If you’re there pick up. Okay, call me. I found your father’s address in Brazil.”
She hustles to her small cottage in Los Feliz, changes her clothes, and readies herself to apologize to this new guy for canceling last night’s dinner because she had a sudden meeting with an important client.
“Moses, it was nothing. Nothing. I love you.”
She fantasizes about feeling his cock inside her when she is alone, or when she is having sex with me, her husband.
Tears misted in Jay’s eyes. Moses crossed his arms against his chest, bowed his head, and shut his eyes tight. A wave of nausea overcame him. He felt as if he needed to expel an internal projectile of irrational jealousy. He tried to quell the impulses of self-annihilation surging in him. He imagined the blackening blood cells expanding at an ever-increasing rate, mocking him.
“Jay”—he reached out and held her hand—“can you get yourself in shape to come down in five minutes?”
“Moses, I love you. Only you.” Jay reached over and hugged him. “Make it ten. I need a shower.”
“I love you, too. Take your time.” He squeezed her hand, bent over, and kissed her gently on the lips. He pushed himself off the bed and slouched down the hall, trying to decode his own roiling emotions, the clashing of jealousy and empathy.
“She okay?” Alchemy flipped the phone back to Moses, who fumbled it but caught it before it hit the ground.
“Got a killer migraine. Lot of tension lately. She’ll be out soon.”
“I told Hannah, your ma, that’d you’d call her back in ten minutes.”
“Thanks.”
“Change of plans. Andrew’s driver will be here any minute. We have some serious business to untangle. Kasbah is being taken over by Der Saurbrugger Gruppen,” he overenunciated the corporation’s name in a Chaplinesque German accent, “and we have buyout or bonus clauses in our contract. I’ll stay at his place tonight and meet you at Cedars-Sinai tomorrow at eleven.”
Moses exhaled. He’d been spared the indignity of the renewed meeting of his brother and his wife until he had a chance to process their relationship.
A black four-door BMW pulled up. “Good trip. Was a good trip. And Mose”—Alchemy touched his shoulder, then hugged him—“you’re gonna be fine. Probably outlive me.” He disappeared behind the frosted windows of the car’s backseat.
Moses stepped onto the small porch, the front door still open, where he stood stupefied. Once again everything had changed, yet truly nothing had changed, and he attempted to escape this irrationality by imposing an almost perverse dialectic: Did Jay love him less? No. Had their years together somehow been nullified and degraded? No. Had she betrayed him? No. But still … History had taught Moses that all nations—and individuals, too—must, in order to survive, obfuscate, deny, and rearrange the exact composition of the smelted logic of lies and silences into “truth.” He had formulated a General Principle of Livability: Hope + Need – Denial = your Livability Quotient. Now, his “truth” undone, he wondered if could rebalance the equation. If it even mattered anymore.
20
THE SONGS OF SALOME
The Waves
I had another “episode” last week after suffering three nights of exile from my sleepself. Thankfully, these new burns are not severe. Dr. Bellows did not exactly react with compassionate rectitude as I tried to explain the terror of clarity.
The terror begins when I see my life as one long nocturnal arc of sleeplessness. I become enraptured by visions of such persuasive and vital detail—when the veils that divide the mist of real and dream, past and future, fall—and all the timeless dimensions stretching between Dream and Reality become one. These dimensions, except during the “clarity,” are as unseeable as the eighty percent of the universe that is hidden, dark matter. The invisible tentacles of light eviscerate my soulsmell. I feel the light tentacles transforming into laser blades that slice into my synapses, which sets off an uncontrollable panic that I will be separated from my body. The psychic protons that hold me as a consciousness are jettisoned, and I am disseminated into the universe, into nontime, lost in the dark matter. I fear I will never again find myself whole.
This is not at all similar to the transcendent out-of-your-body creative experience that is familiar to every true artist. Or when I am communing with my DNA. The clarity is no spiritual reverie. No, I am ripped from my essence, my body and soul. I never know if I will come back to myself or if I will forever be torn, trapped in this unforgiving, odorless realm.
It happened again last week, the same way it first happened when I was teenager. After the baby died—and he did die to me!—I awoke during the night and ran shrieking into my parents’ room. They stayed awake with me all night as my body trembled. Hilda put warm compresses on my head. Dad rubbed my feet. It happened once with Horrwich, too, on the night of my ungraduation party. It happened when Alchemy was murdered.
When I hurt myself or hurt others, it is because this terror is seething and I can feel the waves beginning. My cuttings, my burnings are my declaration: I am real. You are real. I can hurt myself and hurt you and I can bleed. I will remain tethered to this reality, no matter how painful. The doctors think my behavior reflects self-loathing or a desire to escape. It conforms to none of those categories. It is unclassifiable.
Only in those etheresque episodes, sucked into the invisible dark matter, have I felt unvarnished fear. I have no fear of what has been done to me or what will be done, because nothing has power over me except for that one incur
able terror. I never want to feel it again. Yet I always know that I will.
Now that Alchemy is gone, I have no one who understands. If only I could see my granddaughter, Persephone.
O Persephone, if you could only sing for me and I for you …
BOOK TWO
At evening she leads him on to the graves of the longest lived of the House of Lament, the sibyls and warners
—Rainer Maria Rilke
21
THE MOSES CHRONICLES (2001)
De-lirious, Di-laudid, De-lusionary
The swirls of the ashen apocalypse at dusk, the eyes of unseen assassins, the ferric pyres, and the incandescent collapse of a great American edifice: eternal images from that inconsolable September day. In that stark moment of communal suffering and rage, Moses hoped that he would be forgiven for his small exaltations. The doctors proclaimed Phase One of the operation a success.
Waking up in his bed in Cedars’ Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, his mind bathed in morphine, Moses wondered if the events of the previous weeks—discovering the truth about Hannah and Salome, Alchemy and Jay, and the Trade Center tragedy—were some kind of drug-addled mirage. But when his mom and Jay rushed into the room for the first time after he was released from isolation, his aching heart told him it was no illusion.
He remembered that first morning at Dr. Fielding’s office, after he and Alchemy returned from their road trip. Fearing that any memory of Jay had been lost in Alchemy’s cascade of conquests, Moses quickly introduced them. “You remember Jay from when she worked for the Sheiks at Kasbah.”
