T is for thirty summers

* * *

This isn't about you.

You will not feel good about yourself after it's over.

Even a litle bit, you won't think to yourself how lucky things are
different for you. You've got your shit
together. You know spiritual secrets and the way of the stock market
and other incomprehensible things you've
deluded everyone around you into believing you know.

This isn't about you.

Say this with me under the breath: you, you, you.

Me, me, me.

Ages will pass before the realization comes that all you talk of is
yourself. And it's a good thing. But not
for me. So stop talking. Please.

There's this guy you once loved.

He's a bad poet. A drunk. He has terrible comprehension of right and
wrong no matter how sensible his love
of art gets. Refinement means dullness. He's the part of the sword that
never tastes the bitterness of
flesh. The root that doesn't sink into the soil, if you catch my drift,
guys. Ladies, an appropriate
analogy is forthcoming: unexplored caverns. Get it?

This isn't about you.

It's about evacuation of the "me" the "you" the "I." And about all the
stuff that's unfit to say let alone
print. And all lies. So please go back from whence you came.

Say this under your breath: happiness, happines, happiness.

Now in this spot, just below, write what that is. Be sparse, there's
limited room...

Done? You're wrong.

* * *

Chapter One.

He's going to hell. Having tried for fifteen years fifteen or more
consecutive times to commit this down for
someone to see, I've failed him. Failed everyone but of most
importance, him.

&; while only the inanimate no longer look on me with disdain this
won't become easier. No matter how many times
stop, restart, start, typewriters melted and thrown from the window,
journals massacred by scissors, computer disks
cut with tin snips-no matter.

Will art continue?
Can art exist if only it records misery and happiness and that is not
the answer of what is art? Misery
and happiness are the easy things to discuss in life.

Those are the ends of the clock pendulum we watch when staring at a
clock. No one, not him, notices the long second-
stroke in between. Life is always between misery and happiness. No one
believed me. Especially him.

These are only the stories I remember. The captured bits of location
pieced together by hand-knotted threads
of disjointed routine, story, exaggeration.

Many years ago, we had the unequivocal privilege of a live-in editor a
twenty-four hour sadist a non-stop precursor
to insanity-to-come. Each evening after the long workday of odd job or
school or the insufferable loneliness of no
job no work no school, I'd sit down the vagaries of chores
accomplished-the children off to bed or playing with their
things, television turned down to an inaudible hum, indistinguishable
jazz on the stereo. I'd sit and stare off at
walls, imitating meditation. I am the king of imitation and I am going
to hell to meet him. This is only the map.

&; he knew well the legend. About how we must be built with buttons
inside. The same subtle tricks of love work double-
time in hate. The only respite is the middle, and I've come to know the
simplicity of this through the bipolar swing-set
ride of love spit love. Maps have starting points and ending points,
areas where information is no longer available.
No matter how detailed they are, there will always be the void, the
unnamed distance between. I am the three-
dimensional map to hell, back, and to the middle.

Listen: these are only the stories I remember.

* * *

Locking and unlocking. Apartments no longer countable over years. How
do you quit something you've never begun? You
unlock it from within. Let it be stolen back in the middle of the
night. Let the thief take all they want. Just leave
me empty and able to refill the chipped and torn walls with a new
paint: look only forward, blind to the past. Forgiving,
forget, forgot.

There's no such thing as exorcism. Demons hide in mirrors, the surface
of rivers, your reflection always looking over
its shoulder for their presence. Those haunted know this just as
everyone expects the sun to rise in the morning, even
if clouds block its view. They KNOW it is there.

This the burden to carry even after we've metamorphosed from the poison
of life as caterpillars, larval in development.
After we are light and laughing butterflies in the full of summer, in a
country where caterpillars no longer exist. When
demonology has been lost to the archaic dictionary we barely remember
knowing about. There's no such thing as exorcism.
But there are maps filled with arcane runes, and these histories are
quickly becoming illegible.

Listen:

I have gone by the name Perry for as long as I remember.

My birth certificate reads Ezra NMI Perry. I never answer to Ezra. I
don't know him.

I sat on the bench under Asian plums full and overripe on their
branches, under the deep southeastern azure
morning sky, and muttered my name, a mantra to re-center. Take any
thoughts of what was and attach them to the
watch crystal gems glittering on the sidewalk. Sweep them away to never
occupy me again. Perry, Perry, Perry.
Say anything three times and it comes true.

Perry who is nearing forty. Perry who never speaks his mind. Perry who
lives in a run-down part of New Orleans and
has developed coughing fits in the morning from chain-smoking menthol
cigarettes. Perry who prided himself for binges
of excess, the bragging rights of whiskey weekends and cocaine
weeks.

Perry whose life takes sudden U-turns, and no one he knows believes
him. Clarity. Concentration. We live our days
in the dull middle, and the middle we believe to be dull is anything
but. This is Perry's testament to escape and
return and escaping to the place where clocks no longer tick, their
tocks frozen by no longer letting them pass
the quiescence of the center. A silent pendulum means the spirits
occupy the room, and I collect broken clocks.

He's still here. Never leaves. Everything else around the normal
apartment of apartment carpet, bland window blinds,
creme-colored kitchen appliances seem static. He's static, like lint
that's inside a pocket. Go ahead, take it out. It
returns. He's in the closet again. I hear his acoustic guitar. A piece
of lint in the closet. The strumming stops.

"Hey, that you Ezra?" The lint's voice reminds me of the way girls
sound in the morning. The ones that smoke and
wish they had woke up somewhere else. The voice of sounds that wish
they had something better to do. Ennui. "So, that
you?"

He's wearing a rock concert t-shirt. It's always that or my black,
laundered t-shirts. One day, he had on my lucky
boxers--you know, the ones where all those girls in the mall and
grocery store are secretly attracted to. I have
a few pair of those. Guess which?

We nod the universal "what's up" nod. I'm not even gonna tell him to
stop calling me Perry. He can't remember. Brian
suffered a severe head trauma as a kid when his cousin hit him in the
head with a tire swing. But he can play a
guitar like he was Pan rutting in the forest of Nymphs. Nymphs.

Forever is an artificial construct used to comfort lovers and scare
criminals-to-be. A sham that exists in
every dialect. Forever is as permanent as clouds, lightning, shadow,
dew. Because it has TIME to work inside.
It comes and goes and is always around the corner. Emotions can weigh
down with an understanding of forever
only in that pain will often never leave. It hunts and lurks like a
stalker after children in a playground.
Lascivious thoughts for later. Always returns to time.

Brian and I spend our evening tonight playing video games. Bars are too
expensive and girls are too much
trouble. Not the initial amazement of their underthings. Not their
unique taste. Not wanting something
that isn't to be had. But they're trouble because you are weak-minded.
You let them coerce you into changing
yourself. &; you say its for the best.

"It's really for the best if you do it this way."

"Yes, it's really for the best. You're right. I love you so
much."

We play fighting games. We fake fight in public. Sucker punches and
random unexpected shoves. The unexpected
I can at least expect.

Brian never fully recovered the tire swing fiasco. Or his ex-wife.
Brian took all his marbles, his inherited
trust fund life and gave them away. Not that he had many marbles.
Brian's crack-whore ex-wife cheated on him
endlessly, sold furniture on the weekends and bought crack. Not even
cocaine like her lifestyle &; neighborhood
would presume. Not a habit of painkillers &; sleeping pills. Not
getting high with her girlfriends &; swinging.
Crack rock. &; he blamed himself. She told him so.

"This is your fault. You're never here! You don't even want to be
here!"

"Yes, it's really for the best. You're right. I love you so
much."

And she just disappeared.

* * *

We arrive at Brian's bachelor party before the other guys. Best men
have a duty to make that night not sappy.
It has to include sin. Secrets telling the groom that no matter who you
are sleeping with for forever (read:
until one of you gets an itch to scratch) you will remember this night
when you are on the couch. When you
dig your shit out of dumpsters. When your clothes wind up on the lawn.
Your dirty clothes. Your tools. Your
stuff that defines you since you forgot to define yourself. And most of
it you don't even like. She picked
it out. She told you to get it.

And you're in love. And the world is a beautiful place. But tonight
Brian will be humiliated in front of his
friends. Tonight two strippers will be snuck inside. They'll come out
why we all sit around and play video
games. And attack him. We've paid extra for bruises &; scratches.
His back mauled. I want hickies on his crotch.
I want blood. And I want him to not get married. His friend from high
school we found and invited, he wants
Brian to get a blowjob so he can take pictures. Everyone needs
blackmail material. There is no way to
loneliness. Loneliness is the way.

I thought someone had died when he told me. A terrible accident he's
been deformed I'll never look upon him
the same again. His entire family just died. A small country was nuked.
No. Just getting hitched. To someone
I've had in hotels. &; every guy knows hotel sex may be the ultimate
moment of experimentation. What do we
say to a buddy who leaves a bar or club with a lady?

"You go to a hotel?"

"No. Her/My place."

"Oh."

or...

"You go to a hotel?"

"Yeah."

"Awesome. She get freaky?"

"It was a hotel."

"Yeah, yeah..."

Come what may tonight, he's gonna remember this even after the marriage
has been dissolved. After she sells
his riding lawnmower. Gets arrested in a hotel of all places with five
black guys gangbanging her. The idiots
forget to put a wet towel by the cheap door's bottom. Weed and crack
wafted out. &; vice squad rolled in. They
confiscated the video and the chief has it right now at home going at
himself, his wife asleep in bed and
angry they can't afford a trip to Cabo.

Tonight, Brian, you are going to step outside of time and be yourself
without your trust fund or your future
crack-whore. Without your circa-1980 camaro. Without your collection of
Star Wars memorabilia. Tonight is free
the stars are shedding their light across parking lots and strip clubs,
martinis and shot after shot of tequila.
And forever doesn't seem so long tonight. Did I fail to mention I had
her after they met? Regret equals acceptance.
I accept nothing. Not even Brian's choice of freedom. I should have
warned him: go back from whence you came!