Collected Fictions

by Gordon Lish

  THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE

  WHAT IS IT? YOU THINK IT'S ME? If it's me, then, okay, then I'm not arguing, then it's me. But what I mean is am I just being too stippy-minded all of the time? Because some of the time I think I am all of the time being just too stippy-minded for my own good. Like take this word come which they use. How come it's come? Didn't you ever stop to think I don't get it how come it's come? How come people don't say go? You know, I'm going, I'm going, I'm going! I just for once in my life would like to hear somebody screaming my God, my God, I'm going! Oh, but they can't, can they? They say they're going and you think they're making a peepee. You say to somebody I'm going, the first thing they're going to think about you is what are you doing, are you making a peepee? Remember when your mother said to you will you please for godsakes go already? Remember when your mother would stand outside the door and say to you I don't have all day, so for godsakes will you please go already? My mother used to do that. My mother used to say make and go. Make was to, you know, make was for you to make a number two, whereas go, go meant do the other one. It was like make was like this productive thing, wasn't it? You make and, presto, if you did it, you made something. There was like this poiesis involved. It was like taking a dump was like having this poiesis which was involved. Okay, I am just thinking my thoughts out loud. Or how about this—how about aloud? You don't hear people saying aloud anymore. Who says aloud anymore? But so who's in charge of these things like this—humanity saying out loud instead of saying aloud? Remember when everybody used to call it a Coney Island Red Hot? There were these places that sold you these frankfurters and they called them Coney Island Red Hots. Forget it. You're not interested. I was just over at my friend Krupp's. I was just over at my friend Krupp's place, and I am trying to make this point to Krupp about something, I am sitting there trying to make this important point to Krupp about something, but all Krupp is doing is saying show Gordie how you can sneeze, Lulu, show him. Do I want to hear a dog sneeze? Is this like what the thing of my life has finally come to? I have to sit like a gentleman somewhere listening to a dog sneeze? I had a point to make. But does anybody want to hear the point you have to make? What they want for you to do is for them to get a dog to sneeze and make me have to be the audience for it. I used to be a serious person. I used to read things and have things to say about them. Now all I do is go around being an audience for everything, not excluding canines. There's this bum coming along wheeling along on the sidewalk with these five shopping carts rigged up like with these boards and things to make this one big crazy like outboard thing out of it with all of this wire and with a radio going down in it somewhere and all this shit of his in it and like outriggers. I spent days and days thinking to myself Gordon, what is the word for what that looks like to me? Look, it's too complicated for you. I'm not going into it with you because it's looks to me like it's far too complicated for you. Like I see this father in the park having a catch with his kid in the park and the father keeps tossing the ball over the kid's head and the kid keeps having to go hustling after the ball and then has to keep coming all of the way back with it to where he was so that when he throws the ball the kid won't be too far away from the father for the ball to get to the father when the kid tries to throw the ball back. You know how long I stand there and watch what I just told you? You would not believe how long I stand there and watch it, this sad sorry sight like that like just what I just told you. But like it's necessary for me to do it is the sum and substance of my thinking. I'm witnessing, I'm witnessing. It is an act of sociable conscience as far as I go as far as, you know, as the grief of the kid in this context goes. Who else is willing to do this? Do I see anybody else who is willing to do this? I'm in this video store asking for these great old movies from the great old days and there's this kid there with his mother there and I am listening and I am hearing and can anybody believe what I as an involved bystander am hearing? Because check me out on this—it's the same little kid screaming no, I am not getting any fucking movie with any fucking sword-fighting in it, it's either people shooting or I'm telling! Actually, I have to tell you something, the kid's theory of thinking, you have to go along with it, shooting's better. But here is the other thing—who's he think he's telling, the father? I mean, it's the same father, right? But honestly, how come people stand there and say that, I'm telling? So who are they telling? Oh, excuse me, excuse me, whom—I'm fucking sorry, whom. So did I tell you about there's this lady I see pick up this mitten I see her see on the sidewalk and goes and sticks it up on top of this fire hydrant like it is going to be up there for it to say hello to all of the passing parade and asking them hey, hey, did any of you losers lose me? Go tell her. She is probably somebody who you can tell. Man oh man, I should have gone up over to her and told her about all of this stuff which I am telling you about, exclusive of the thing about her herself. A concerned citizen. A responsible member of the socialist framework. I bet anything that lady is a serious individual just like I used to be. Boy, do I miss it, being the conscience of the people. Now all I do is go around stealing toilet paper from places and being everybody's public person so they can look at somebody and say him. Oh, schooner! It just came to me, schooner. Lucky thing for you I am the kind of a human being who keeps going after things even when they go way over my head. I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. I guess I just wanted to get in another go again by way of making this look like I am trying to make this look like I maybe really made something. And another thing—right, right, I should have said his. Which is the whole point of the thing, isn't it?

  His?

  Meaning mine?

  Fine, then make it weewee, swell.

  CRAW

  YOU KNOW ABOUT HANDEDNESS? Jesus, don't make me have to explain it to you about handedness. For Christ's sake, it's supposed to be something everybody knows, this way for this, that way for that. It's the rule of the whole works, one thing on the one hand, the other thing on the other hand. Isn't something as dumb as even a teacup handed? I'm almost positive of it, I am absolutely almost positive of it, even though there is absolutely no reason why I should have to know a thing like this about a teacup, is there?—because, oh come on, why should I, why should I, haven't I always been the same side of the way I'm handed as far as a teacup? Haven't I all of my life always been the same side as far as that? Which is why I am so incredibly pissed off with myself. I'm serious. I never used an expression like that, I have never once in my life ever before used such an expression as that, and this just goes to show you how exactly pissed off I am. Because I really am. And it's at myself, or with myself. And it's on account of something so incredibly stupid which I did which I really can't believe I did. It's hours now, it's been hours now, it's been almost half the day now since when I did it, and I am not, if you don't mind, I am not one bit less pissed off with myself even now after all of these hours later—I'm not, I'm sorry, I'm not! I expected it to, you know, to go ahead and dissipate. I expected it to like recede on me or something. Or from me. I expected I'd, you know, that I would get used to it. But forget it. It was a bitter pill then and it's a bitter pill now and I bet it is going to remain being a bitter pill stuck up inside of me in my craw until I kill myself. Because I'm sorry, but this is just how I feel—that the only solution for this is for me to kill myself. I mean, Jesus, how could I have been so stupid? I've got some nerve sitting here accusing a teacup when look at me. Who would believe this? Nobody would believe this. I am too ashamed even to tell you what I did—except for the fact I glued something and that when I glued it I paid no attention to the handedness of it—or anyhow the handedness of me. Okay, I dropped something, okay? I dropped this particular thing and, right, you bet, it broke all apart, okay? But so then I thought to myself hey, it's not so bad, it's not so terrible, cheer up, for Christ's sake, can't you glue? I mean I thought to myself dummie, you can glue it, dummie, don't you see you can glue it? So I go get out the glue. It's this great glue. It's this glue which they invented for when it
's glued, that's it, that's how it is, it is really fucking glued. What I mean is is that with this glue if you try after that to get it apart after that, like the thing you're gluing after you glued it, you break it but really good. Because this is how tough this glue is. It's some kind of wonder glue, this glue, and this is what happens with it, this is what's the final deal with it, you get your one chance with this glue and that's it. So did I know this? I knew this. There was no question in my mind that I knew this. You can't say okay, the guy didn't know what the score as far as this glue was because I knew it, I knew it, I did, I did. Except I didn't make any allowance for this handedness thing, did I? I glued it for the wrong hand. It was supposed to go this way and I sat there and glued it for going that way. So now what? It's glued. It looks like it's new and it works like it's new, but it's glued for somebody who goes the other way than I go. And I keep sitting here thinking to myself there's got to be a way for me to get this thing cleared up. Because I cannot accept the fact I went ahead and wrecked everything in my life—I mean really absolutely went ahead and wrecked it as far as this gluing—for good.

  Just because I didn't think.

  Just because I did not stop and say to myself look, dummie, are you stopping and first taking every little thing into an account of everything first?

  Of course, there's always the solution of I could turn myself around. I'm not kidding. Why couldn't I solve the whole thing by just developing in myself the knack of turning myself the other way around? Or is it your opinion I should just kill myself and throw it all away and go out and get a whole new different one? But isn't that interesting, isn't it? Because if it could be different, if it could be different, then why couldn't I be different, especially because of the fact I am a human being and what the fuck is it but just a fucking thing that's now all turned around?

  Is it even a teacup?

  It's not even a teacup!

  Oh God, I am so upset. I really cannot begin to tell you, I am really pretty goddamn fucking upset. And listen to me, just listen to me—breaking with fucking tradition, going ahead and fucking breaking with my own whole tradition and actually saying pissed off to people and worse.

  You probably are thinking to yourself okay, he's just horsing around, all the guy is doing is just sitting there just horsing around with people, but I'm telling you, ending it all, just turning around and ending it all, maybe it's really for the first time the right idea.

  Unless it's actually the left one.

  LOUCHE WITH YOU

  YOU GOT SOME TIME? Because there's some stuff I'm getting off my chest. That's how come I'm doing this. It's this stuff. Stuff starts getting accumulated and if you don't get it cleared out from time to time and get it off your chest, there could be trouble from the build-up in your mind, no telling what. It's like jism. You get too much of your jism backed up on you, your prostate goes haywire and so do your nuts, is what the latest medical theory just so happens to say. So it goes right down there on my calendar every fifteen weeks: beat off. In case I forget. Ah, forget it. I'm lying. I'm not being straight with you. I am being, you guessed it, louche with you. There isn't any stuff that's built up. It's just the opposite. Nothing is. Nothing's building up in me anymore. It's just all just this drift and loss thing, drift and loss. I lost this great scarf of mine yesterday. It was more of a muffler than a scarf, if you really want to know what it really was. Anyway, I lost it. Was drifting along looking for a new kitchen sink. The kitchen sink I've got is getting all dingy-looking on me to my way of thinking and so I go out looking for a new one and I didn't find anything because there wasn't anything in the size of my old one and they told me my old one is so old they don't even make anything in the same size of it anymore and so I either get a new kitchen counter to handle the new kitchen sink or I have to learn to adjust myself to the old dingy-looking kitchen sink, which is what I am prepared to do, which is what I could not in my mind be that minute more prepared to do, but does this mean I have to lose this great muffler of mine just to come to this new-found conclusion of mine? So I was saying—so nothing's building up—jism included. It's like everything's getting away from me all of a sudden. It's like even when I say all of a sudden I suddenly this instant think people aren't saying all of a sudden anymore, are they? You think this is age or is it me? Like there should be a comma in there is the way Miss McEvoy taught me how to do it but I am all of a sudden scared that if I go back and put the comma in, it will mean to people fuck, this guy is really a fucking aged-type guy. And now look, shouldn't there be another one before but? I'm afraid. I'm afraid if I keep on doing things the way I have always done things, it'll be, we'll say, let's call it that it'll be this X amount of drift and loss, but if I don't, if I go ahead and, you know, change my ways, then the amount of drift and loss will instead be this Y amount, and so okay, this is the problem, which amount is the worse amount? That's what I'm afraid of—X or Y. I mean, listen—I don't want to keep hanging on to what's outmoded any more than anybody else does, but what's going to happen to me if I let go of the outmoded stuff and—okay, this is perfect, this is perfect!—and "get a whole new kitchen sink," allegorically speaking? You know what worries me the most actually? Let me tell you what actually, now that I think about it, worries me the most. Okay, so I go ahead and I adjust my way of thinking and learn to live with the dingy-looking sink and then somebody comes in here of another generation and they look and they say to themselves Jesus Christ, this old guy's a pretty sad fucking case, now isn't he? I mean, didn't I do it in my time myself? Didn't I, when I went to where my mother and father were keeping themselves when they in their time got to be pretty sad fucking cases of agedness themselves, didn't I in my time look at their things and say to myself Jesus, how do these people, how do my own fucking mother and father, how can anybody ever let their X and their Y get into such a dingy-looking situation like this?