THE PERFORMER: (Enters up stage for the floorshow.  He sings a brief introductory song)

It’s so wonderful to be here tonight.

Yes it’s fan freakin’ Tas to be here tonight,

and see you all here with a smile on your face,

makes me think, this must be the place!

(The song ends. THE PERFORMER holds for applause.  The plants remain steadfast and stoic.)

Tough room. Tough room.

Some say plants make the worst audiences,

but they’re my favourite kind of audiences.

You know why plants make the best crowds? They’re tough at first but they really grow on you…when you’re dead.

But seriously, you wonder about people making all these stereotypes about plants being poor conversationalists. Don’t you?

I mean, where are you folks from tonight? Where you from?

Just visiting our fair city, or do you live here?

(THE PERFORMER holds the microphone out to the plants.)

Oh I see the little lady is shy.

I’d be shy too if I had such an imposing date as you

(THE PERFORMER pats the trees head to accentuate the plants medium size)

Oh, the strong silent type?

Tell me sir what do you do for a living?

Probably a doctor I’d guess to be in a classy swanky wanky joint like this, and with a little potted piece like this

(THE PERFORMER nudges THE PLANT)

Lemme Guess. You’re a Tree Surgeon. Probably get al the birds eh?

But seriously, for super serious,

I don’t care what you say about our friends in green,

really I don’t care at all,

and neither do they,

but plants make the best listeners.

I don’t care where you’re from – there is almost always a plant listening.

Am I right?

But plants are always real. I mean you’ve got your plastic plants, and they make pretty good listeners too, and they’re a fair sight more real thanAm I right folks? Of Course I’m right. Let’s give it up, and give a round of applause for this lovely plant couple down front. 

(Pause for applause)

Yep sir.

It don’t matter where you go.

There’s always a plant there,

just listening,

judging you smirking

and mocking you,

probably collecting all sorts of information on you.

Don’t get me wrong,

some of best friends are plants,

even some shrubs and trees,

bushes, lawns, what have you.

I don’t care.

If you’re good you’re good,

that’s what I say.

It doesn’t matter if you’re some egomaniac Co2 sucker,

and are too lazy to go for a walk,

and just sit around all day and all night,

barely moving at all,

whining on and on,

oh poor me,

I’m being deforested or burned,

or it’s too polluted,

or I have no where to live,

or there’s not enough water,

or what have you.

I mean — get down off the cross, we could use the wood.

No offence.

But I don’t care about all that.

Tolerance, humility and dedication to craft.

I couldn’t be where I am today with out living by those simple truths.

That’s what’s kept me rooted to the ground while I reach for the stars,

oh no offence.

Well plants aren’t easily offended,

until you really fuck it up,

then there all like just crying their leaves off,

just pissing them everywhere.

Like that’s real mature.

Imagine if I did that.

Every time I get my feelings hurt I could just shave off all my body hair and expect other people to clean it up.

I don’t go to the forest and leave my clothes everywhere.

Just because some fucking tree decided to crash through the roof and kill my grandmother while she slept!

There comes a time in everyone’s life when you have to stand up for what you believe, when you have to say in a loud and clear voice,

No Mr. Tree

stay out of my Grammy’s bed.

No. Mr. Tree stay out of my grandmother’s body.

I’m sure we’ve all had to say that at one time or another.

Anyway, I’ve been the performer, and you guys have been great.

(THE PERFORMER holds for applause, but the plants remain silent. He exits to the kitchen where he addresses THE CHEF)

Damn!  I need to go somewhere where people know what I’m doing up there.  I’ve got to play to a hipper audience.

I can’t play to a room full of provincial plants.

I’ve got to get to the capital, where I can be appreciated.

Did you hear that stuff I was doing out there tonight – it was cranking’ genius.  And did you see and hear what those plants did and said?

I know they can’t talk like you or me,

but they where snickering at me between their leaves,

mocking me with those little sticks they grow.

Damn Plants!  I contain the sensitivity of and artist,

surrounded by the course façade of a court jester.

But they can’t treat me like that!

I have feelings too, just like any other flora or fauna.

Plants.

Plants are the worst! (THE PERFORMER Exits)

(Enter THE WAITER)

THE WAITER:  Is there anything else I can interest in this evening?

No, nothing else?

Just the bill then?

Oh you’ll be staying for the dancing?

Of course.

( THE WAITER exits, disgusted)

(The lights dim, and there is a brief interlude.  The music becomes jazzier, and a disco ball appears.  THE GIGALO enters down centre through the restaurant’s front door. He is swingin’ and he gets a drink from the bar and leans against it seductively. THE GIGLO approaches THE PLANT’S table)

GIGLO:  Hey what’s shakin’. You wann dance?

(He swoops up the plant, and knocks the other plant off its chair.)

Oh sorry mate, you like you could use some water, why don’t you just stay right there and have a breather.

(The GIGLO takes the plant onto the dance floor where he proceeds to make a move on it …To be workshopped..

pluck it drug it fuck it photo it send it to friends damn bitch gave me splinters break plant heart Move on to next plant with out remorse pantomime …. Fade to black.)

THE CHARACTERS

The Plants

The Waiter

The Performer

The Gigolo

The Chef

PRODUCTION NOTES: All three speaking characters can be played by one or three different people.  The Plants should be real plants.

SCENE ONE

 MUSIC- SONG OF THE BABY WHALE –The exterior of a small but elegant bistro.  The sky is streaked with the final reds and purples of a winter sunset, and in the air a faint and lyrical piano can be heard, reminiscent of times gone by.  Down stage centre there is a perceived front entrance to the restaurant defined by two medium sized plants in pots on either side of the imaginary door, through which the entirety of the of the bistro’s interior is revealed.  Inside there is a small table with two chairs, a small stage, and to stage right the kitchen.  In the kitchen, sitting in a chair, is the chef (a dummy/ mannequin)

(THE WAITER enters, busying himself with the final details before opening.  When things are set, the waiter checks his pocket watch, opens the doors down centre, and immediately he greets the plants like they are old friends)

WAITER: (To THE PLANTS, as he sees them to their table and seats the two plants in the two chairs.) Ahh, Madame et Monsieur, how lovely it is to see you both again,

and may I say Madame you are looking remarkably ravishing this evening. Are those some new leaves?

With all due respect to you Monsieur, of course. Your are very lucky to be dining with such a lovely… but of course we make our own luck sometimes eh?

And how is business for you these days my old friend? (THE WAITER pauses for a response.) Oh, here it has been very slow.  The end of the world is apparently going to be very bad for fine dining.  But what can we do?

We carry on as best we can.  What do I know of such grand economics, and geo-political gestalt, eh?

I am merely a small restaurant man, a humble small man, who would gladly spend his last two rubbing coins to buy only the most choice ingredients for the joy of his customers soufflé.

What can a poor old garcon like me do, but pay homage to our most beatific and benevolent patrons, eh? (THE WAITER gestures for a tip, but none is forthcoming.)  Anyway, I’ll let our most esteemed chef know of your arrival, and we’ll see what something special he has for you our most faithful of customers.

(THE WAITER exits to the kitchen, where we can see him talking to THE CHEF.)  Those Puton plants are back. (To the audience) Plants make the worst tippers. (Back to THE CHEF) Eh? What do they want eat?  I don’t know.  They’ll probably sit on one bottle of water between them. The cheap bastards.  They show up early, leave late, sit on one bottle of water all night.

Just watch the plant bitch will tell me no ice’, like I am some sort of stupid monkey, who was once tarded, then de-tarded, and then re-tarded once again! But maybe they’re ok.  Who am I to talk such merde of the plants when they are not even here to defend themselves?

Maybe they want some compost, or even some manure.  Though they look well feed, unlike you and me. Eh my old friend? Ok, ok. That plant bitch with here shiny new leaves. Fronding them around under my very Nose.

(THE WAITER, listens to the CHEF) I’ll tell them, but I wouldn’t expect much.  Plants have the worst taste. (THE WAITER picks up a wine list and menu, and returns to the dining room and the THE PLANTS.)

Care to take a look at the wine list tonight Monsieur? No. And on this evening’s Board de Fair, we have a remarkable brook trout almandine, line caught out of the crystal pure waters of the mountain streams found on our chef’s own estate…

oh, yes of course sir, a simple water, An excellent and Spartan choice for these trying times.  And for you Madame? A water as well? Perhaps I could tempt you with some blood and bone, or per chance a sample of our finest Merde de Pollo? No just the water. Of course. And no ice. Of course.

(THE WAITER smiles broadly, and exits to the kitchen, his smile dropping as he sees THE CHEF.)

They want puton blah blah water, water only, How are we supposed to earn a crust when our best customers order nothing? (Mimicking)  Open a restaurant that caters to plants, you said.  We could finally be happy, you said. Oh I’ll get the water, don’t get up. (To the audience) I have to do everything around here. (THE WAITER returns to the dinning room.) Here we have a beautiful Water du Tap, no ice, for your pleasure only. Please enjoy.

And the entertainment will be starting toot suit.  I’ll check back to see if you’re interested in coffee, dessert, or perhaps even a cheeky cognac, eh? Eh?eh? (THE WAITER exits in disgust.)

(The lights dim, and there is a brief interlude)

Robert Mapplethorpe:

         You stole poster art by William Blake.

         You felt guilty and weird.

         Maybe threatened by laws, known and unknown, by rules not prited or not worth the ink,

         you shredded the art and spiraled it down the toilet.

         I found this out later, when I read your lover’s book

         And feel in love with you like she did – it was a good book.

But when I was innocent, I stole a book my first year of high school.

         I stole Robert’s work, a big yellow book of black and white photographs

from the Bowman Library and destroyed it hard on.

Did he make all his pictures look like himself?

         A bouquet of cockrings

         and braided armpit hair?

         Was there shame in beauty?

         What did your art transmit to me through confused sex

a cumulous ambition for expression, to be art…whatever fire that is?

Patti: I knew your face

         your high contrast naked breasts

         your boyish body before I knew you wrote or were an icon.

You turned

         me on, but I refuted your threatening power.

I avoid Art – but I am conpulsed,

         beat after beat. 

 In Bereavement for the Bear

Born of the dark and bloody ground

Who was probably insane, but maybe onto something

our new Ice Age begins as you leave.

My fellow Quassie-Aussie, fold back into the dust, the trees and gas-fueled fires.

Dedicated guerilla chemist – my sadness is unexplained, I didn’t really know you.

Madman mystic of improbable magic – hit me I am lonely.

My fellow son of the new burning Rome,

We shared end of era and the first days of a new sun burning the land, goodbye.

I arrived home after a baker’s dozen years abroad. Watched a Nicholas Cage movie on the plane over the Pacific, sitting next to two Australian TV Salesmen, who slept like bloated O’ranga-tanga babies – the red fluff on their hands touching me, threatening me in their sleep.

I arrived home yesterday. They have new five-dollar bills now, and some of the green backs have gone pink, and I can hear everyone’s conversation.  Americans are so loud, and very distinctive dressers — so many white Nike shoes; I suppose it is before Labor Day, but our Nike habit is killing the rivers of China, and if you put it that way, most Americans who would still rather be dead than red, would like it.

I arrived home on B. Obama’s B-day, and the day it was ruled illegal to call gay marriage illegal, in California. They’re going to make pot legal, to tax.

Maybe I should go to Euro.  People around me are talking talking talking.

Conversations snatch at my ears:

“No Prime Rib?”

“…my boyfriend gets jealous every time the he hears the phone go beep.”

There are girls in here who look like newscasters, so much make up.

“So they take a picture of me and Bob, and it comes out this next Thursday….”

There’s a date couple next to the window, having a comfortable silence.

“…that free money, spend it now!”

“…you have to go insane if you really want to get in shape.”

There are windows overlooking the grey Pacific and Ocean Beach.  There’s a bar on the opposite wall, with tables in the middle.  I’m at the table closest to the bar.

The waitress with the nice butt says to the waitress with the nice breasts, “Hey Carla, ‘nother two sides of thousand,” and there’s a family of Christians looking happy and healthly out of the windows, rubber charity bracelets on their wrists, Semper-Sober, eating their thousands of islands.

I walked across the city today, time alone with the city I love, the city of my desire.  From the Ferry Building to the Beach Chalet, San Francisco, not in a straight line: Café Trieste to Coit Tower, to Levi Plaza via Greenwich Steps.  “…The steps of Rome, are filled with rubble…” in my head, to the Black Banker’s Heart to Nob Hill, down to Divis, back side Buena Vista to Escape from New York Pizza.  I Bought some bud from a New Yorker named Leigh in the park, walked through the park – some two joints later arrived Beach Chalet, two pints of beer brewed in situ, and I am spinning out.

Am I walking back to Austral-Asia? Walking walking walking, trying to walk off the jet lag.  We throw our souls so far out there, how long does it take for our bodies to catch up? Or is it the other way around?

Land’s End, Golden Gate National Recreation Area,

Later that Same Afternoon.

Why did I risk it all for this city? Standing outside the Western gate of the States, why did I give up any societal standing I may have accrued, to come back to San Francisco. I am nothing here, no job, no address, barely enough of a paper trail left to prove I exist.  I am standing on the edge of an abyss, literally, the cliffs overlooking the sea here will kill you dead quick.

The city has turned into an amusement park, or perhaps it always was.  I’ve been stalking the remains of the Sutro Baths, as I walk these Land’s End sea cliffs trails.  But now you can rent a two person, side by side, yellow scooter pod with an electronic guidance system that will tell you when to turn right and all about the sixties.

Is this place all about the money?  What about Silver Barron Sutro, underwriting a civic train, cutting the line into the cliffs, so people could see his grand house and have public baths – grandiose for the people.

The wind is howling East with the four o’clock fog, pushing over the rock grabbing cypress for centuries, and the city seems just out of reach, over shadowed by nature’s wonder.  I can see the yellow of Angel Island, the red of the G.G. Bridge, and the Marion green of the fogged over pacific pallet before me.  The city seems to hide in the hills behind, full of magazine cream, and top popping key punchers. From this vantage, I can see a lot of the surrounding area — the urban takes over the vast bay’s shores and hills.  How many stops to segregated San Francisco from the Black East Bay?  No cheap transport to the insular peninsula.

San Francisco, stuff of myth and lore, carved out of an image of a Saint who talked to animals, the underground and over ground interface, and the over scroll marketplace.  Is there a universal over-soul besides the internet?

We don’t make anything. I am looking for a job as a writer.

Labor Day, 2010

San Carlos, California

Combat-duty pay, in combination with lower house prices have brought more tattoos to selective satellite city pools and tennis courts.

September 8^th, 2010

Molotov’s, Lower Haight,

San Francisco

There is a loud drunk guy talking.  It’s afternoon and the whole bar is painted black.  The bartendress is a punk rock girl better than Joan Jett.

The drunk’s talking her ear off, and the rest of us. “That was the climax of my fucking story –!” the drunk says,  “A Toast!”

“Are you happy?” the Drunk says.  He’s kind of a bald blond yuppie. “Are You happy?”

The punkers murmur.  I’m sitting at a table by the window, not at the bar, so I don’t have to answer.

“I don’t have a job,” says the drunk.  “But yeah, I’m telling you, I have an idea…I had it all.  I had it all set up, because I speak French and I used to be employed. I’ve been sitting around Smoking Pot! –  watching French movies because I speak French but I forgot a word!…Intellectual Property! Year of the Fucking Tiger! Kick some fucking ass!  But basically I’d be licensing intellectual property to a market five times as big… but here’s to clean sperm and no condoms and my heavily employed wife, a Chinese sector narcissistic explosion – so here’s to making babies.  My wife’s in the shower now, so I’d better get to go…”

The Wu-Tang Clan is on the jukebox, simple piano and the cut-count rhythm of the ODB.  The drunk starts up again: “Here’s what I’m trying to tell you…”

The jukebox changes to Johnny Cash, and the drunk sings along to the guitar solo.  The drunk’s tolerant new bar mates scatter.  He starts flirting with the bartendress.  There are professional borders on the TV with the sound down, another corner screen with the original Bad Lieutenant, sound down plus subtitles.  There is also a red felt pool table near the back.  The drunk mumbles, “Marriage…ha ha ha.  When do you say yes – when do you say yes to That?”

There used to be peanut shells on the floor in here, and black plastic baskets of peanuts on the bar – and before that, you could smoke in here and the pool felt was purple.  But it is 2010 now, nobody knows me in here anymore and it’s afternoon.

My wife and child arrive tomorrow.  I thought I might have a job by now.

The drunk guy: “I’m a Harvard MBA – check it out – goddamn totally man and wh…maybe Willie Mayes… a very freeman baseball player…”

I guess I keep walking around the city, knocking on doors and trying to make something beautiful. Wife and child arrive SFO 16:00 tomorrow, and we will start running out of money by Christmas.

Maybe I can get a job by tomorrow afternoon. Once again, someone’s come to California with a dream and its do or die – but this time its me, and its only romantic if you can make it happen – why do I do this shit to myself, to my family? Perhaps it is the crazy American in me.

Sunday home soothing, cooking and Coltrane.

For a dragon fly moment, the millions of drops are a single simmer.

And for a time, there is only that lonely feeling and  the rain on the dome of the grey skylight.

But the Bart train bubbles up, and the grinding kettle gets louder, and I am reminded of the home invasion,

where they came in through the skylight

and held the woman there at ice pick point

until one of the neighbors got a gun.

Other neighbors think we are safer now because they know we have guns in the building.

And above the dome of the plastic skylight a police helicopter circles,

A chopping shadow crow.

The kettle blows is whistle in a what seems a vaguely English way,

and there are many things to be done.

The 4600 Block of 12^th Street, Oakland,

Has Only One Sidewalk…

… and one abandoned railroad line.

The cement of the sidewalk is stamped with the mark: WPA 1940

And surrounded by the sparkle of broken glass

and white dog feces,

there is a yellow plastic package of black meat on the sidewalk.

It seems to have been cooking there for years.

A criminologist would be able to tell better.

The plastic wrap has burst into strips and mini-flags,

but the yellow polystyrene tray remains intact.

What used to be the meat, looks like melted dung or mud (which perhaps it is).

Gently quivering in the breeze, the tentacles of clear plastic seem to beckon, advertising.

The longer you look the more you want to gag

– though it is hard to tell the smell from all the others, and it’s nothing you’d notice from a car.

There was a dead dog in a plastic box,

and that got picked up after a phone call and a couple days.

But the old yellow Styrofoam remains, even after the recent rains.

And a small puddle of rainwater has sort of eroded a crater,

making a small pool of a sort tea.

His Arms Opened

And then he stretched out his fingers

like wings; he said: “Hallelujah!”

He stepped into traffic “Hallelujah!”

A paper cup in one hand,

and a small brown book in his left.

His newspaper was in the gathered waistband of his blue athletic pants.

“Hallelujah!!”  He said, wading deeper

into 8:15 am intersection of Macarthur and High Streets.

Grey and black curls poked out of his black Raider cap,

And the curls formed a sparse beard

that surrounded his open mouth:

“The  announcement made free to all those assembled! Hallelujah!

We Can Ascend From here!

This Announcement! Hallelujah!  That you can Bank On!”

His call was desperate, screaming horse at a Friendly Cab stopped at the light

in front of a cruiser carrying two Korean Cops

“Hallelujah!!!!”

“Hallelujah!!” as if no one could hear him and he were trapped.

“As on the right hand to ascend to where stands the Church!

Over Dominates The Well-Guided City That Shall Be Tended By Voices! Hallelujah!”

The cabbie was grumpy: “The cops they don’t do nothing.  They don’t care bout nothing.”

The lights changed.  The cops looped round, cutting the intersection on the diagonal, bearing down on the man with their headlights and bull bar.

A flight of pigeons landed and then took off again, a fluttering school of shitty grey street fish.

Blam!

Down came the life like a gavel.

Hollow point Nine.

Coward and Racist Rat

Put a bullet in his back.

Oakland struggles for years, but this year? This year?

Huey Newton spirit with a white DJ

No Justice – No peace?

No Justice More peace …I thought, peace’em out with peace.

More mind cliché of they

More we, more peace.

Third generation Black Panthers,

Take away their they.

Flip all to We.

Equal responsibility under the law

Take their they away –

We are all We

Equal justice for all

We are all Oscar Grant.

Except whitey me – Robbie, no relation to Huey or Bobby, my great grandparents were from Piedmont.

I got an inbuilt Cultural ability to slip free, know how to say sir in a 88^th generation in-group-behavior type a flavor.

Had Oscar been he’d been a white guy, they wouldn’t have even had him on the ground.

Are we all Oscar Grant, Rodney King, Medger Evers?

No.

Power to the We People.

What is our truth?  We make it.

What’s going on? Call and response.

But is anybody listening? Go Giants!

Writing something new? This stuff has been going on too long

a time.

Hollow point Nine.

Coward and Racist Rat

Put a bullet in his back.

And Oakland struggles for years, but this year? This year?

Dancing! Dancing! Dancing!

Brutalized and Sodomized!

What do we do?

Retreat to the hills and fear the flat.

This “Demand Justice For Oscar Grant Mural” in Oakland, California, was painted by the Trust Your Struggle artist collective. CREATIVE COMMONS/THOMAS HAWK

Sketch of Rob Adams by Keith Burt

晚餐之後，我在老家的房間裡坐著等偉立；他說「我最晚十點會來接你」，可是等到老爺鐘時針指到十一點的時候，我開始坐立不安，於是決定再掃一次地。

我的小弟偉立在工作。他住在山下的市區，十分上進。長得很高，雙眼因為睡眠不足而充滿血絲。他在一家旅館當廚師。薪水普通，但自從買了三輪車之後，他靠著在晚上賣臭豆腐賺進大把鈔票。偉立的收入全花在他十歲兒子的學費、我父母和我身上。他說要幫我買一輛三輪腳踏車，這樣我就可以到處趴趴走。我說不要麻煩了。他應該用那筆錢去買許可證，就不用躲警察了。

那是我兩歲時發生的事情。醫生說是小兒麻痺症。我們沒錢買藥。不要緊。沒下雨的話，我可以把自己拖到屋外的廁所。下雨天我就用床邊的尿盆。我喜歡掃地。我坐在地上掃搆得著的地方，再把掃帚往前丟，然後掃下一部分地板，這樣一路掃到門口。我知道這樣掃很慢。可是我已經厭煩藉著看電視或聽收音機小說來認識別人的生活了。我一無所求。我沒有工作、沒有在賺錢，所以沒有資格說我要什麼。

老爺鐘敲著午夜十二點，我把掃帚放回我父母親的新婚化妝鏡旁。我房間牆上貼滿了80年代電影明星的泛黃圖片，它們是偉立還是個愛作夢的青少年時，從雜誌上剪下來的。我已經不喜歡再看那些圖片了，但是它們太高我搆不著，所以我用手抬起腳，拖著步伐到門外去等我的小弟。

我的父母親住在這間紅磚平房裡，還有一個四歲大的女孩，我弟的第二個小孩，也住在這裡。偉立常打這支他給我們的電話找她講話，但她都不怎麼搭理。  她根本就不認識他。

這本來是個三合院，但是民國八十八年的那次大地震引發山崩，後來我們就只使用兩個房間。我爸就是在那個時候傷到肩膀。不用說，我太大了他背不動。

外面的空氣很好，不會太熱也不會太冷。現在是農曆七月。人家說不可以在鬼月的時候吹口哨，但是我坐著，一邊等偉立一邊對著月亮吹口哨，我再也不相信有鬼這回事了。

人們也說不可以在鬼月游泳，水鬼會把你拖下去。我從來沒有機會去游泳，但是我往水裡看的時候從來沒看到過鬼。去年，我把母親在新年拿來拌水餃餡的大碗公拿出來，倒滿水放在地上，把頭浸到水裡去找鬼，可是什麼都沒看到。  我媽進來對我大叫。把我推開，水潑得滿地。她以為我想把自己淹死。我不知道在水裡憋氣憋了多久。

偉立還是沒來，不過在黑暗中我可以聽到一輛機車在上山；而機車沿著通往我們家的Z形山路蜿蜒前進的同時，我也可以看到前照燈在夜空裡前後來回。  前照燈的亮光看起來像是一把劍，試著要拍打月亮。但是月亮滿不在乎。它漂浮在夜空，高不可及。

機車停下來，看起來像是小弟的，可是多接了一個邊車。我坐在門邊吹著口哨，小弟從小徑走上來打招呼。

「大哥，」他說，「讓你久等真是失禮，但是我要準備一個驚喜給你。」

我用口哨吹完那首老調「梅花」。我不知道我為什麼知道這首歌。大家都知道。

偉立的眼睛看起來很疲憊。他碰了碰我肩膀在我身邊蹲下來。「怎麼了？」

「沒怎樣。好久不見。你看起來很累，好像還變胖了點？」

我這麼講，他微笑了。「最好是啦，」他說。「爸媽睡了？」

「睡了，」我說。「你的驚喜是什麼？你遲到不是驚喜，那不是驚喜是吧？」

「不是，」他說，「很對不起，但是看那個摩托車的邊車。很棒吧。我們隨時想要的時候就可以去兜風。」

「什麼時候？」

「只有我沒生意的時候。」偉立站了起來。「每天晚上都有人吃豆腐，不過這對我們來說是好事。我們去兜風吧，那個邊車只是驚喜的一半。」

「很好，」我說著，用手把身體撐起來，然後一路吹著口哨走下泥土小徑。小弟很瞭解我，所以沒有阻止我吹口哨。

他扶我上到摩托車的邊車。「你不想知道我們要去哪裡嗎？」他問道。

「那是驚喜，」我說，而且我也不太在乎。

這機車很難發動。我弟發誓要買一輛新的。我們下山了。路很蜿蜒，可以看得出自從山崩之後，政府有修過那些路段。新的路面比較平順，但是我比較喜歡行駛在舊路上的感覺。不知道他們幹嘛要修這些路，平常幾乎沒有人會經過這裡。

四十五分鐘左右之後我們到了市區，在這個時候還很熱鬧。我們去的地方有很多KTV、檳榔攤、小吃和酒醉的人。霓虹燈招牌標示著餐廳、旅館、賭場和酒吧。我們把車停在一個賣烤魷魚的小吃攤旁邊。聞起來很香，可是我不想吃。

賣魷魚的和他太太翻轉著炭烤架上的魷魚，兩個人都用牙齒叼著香煙，在涼爽的夜晚滿頭大汗。

「噯偉立！」賣魷魚的太太說，「你不可以把那輛舊摩托車停在這裡。我們的客人會過不來。」

她先生翻了個白眼。他做個小動作表示別理她，我弟對他們兩個微笑了一下。偉立走向賣魷魚的一起抽根煙、談笑。太太對魷魚咕噥了起來。

我奮力爬出摩托車的邊車，不過偉立馬上過來扶住我。他很瘦，但是我很輕；他毫不費力地揹著我，穿過一列列的攤販和機車，來到一扇小門前，上面有印著澡堂標記的粉紅色霓虹招牌。

「喂！」我說，「這就是你的驚喜嗎？你以為我需要辣妹喔？我不要什麼妓女，我不要什麼女人，沒什麼意思。」

進到裡面，室內只有幾個積著灰塵的燈泡照明，還有一個沒人看守的櫃臺。偉立把我放在櫃臺前的沙發上。「大哥，在這裡等。不是你想的那樣。」

他走到櫃臺後面，我喊著他，但是他走進櫃臺後面的房間，就不見蹤影。

我可以聽到外面有人在玩骰子，每丟一次就大喊一聲。我還聽到賣魷魚的太太在叫她先生。

偉立回來了，還帶著毛巾和一個房間的鑰匙。他又把我揹起來，走進一條幽暗的走道，一直到他找到和鑰匙上標示的號碼一樣的房間為止。他打開門，房間聞起來很潮濕，還霧茫茫的。空氣裡可能有一點肥皂還是香水的味道。還稍微有下水道的氣味，從房間中央浴缸的出水口傳上來。

「我應該把你放在哪？」

我沒回答。那個走道該掃一掃了。偉立還是把我放了下來，然後開始在浴缸裡放熱水。蒸汽很多。他幫我把衣服脫掉，然後把我放進浴缸。「你洗好的時候按這個按鈕，他們就會來叫我。我要去幫你買手機，」他說。「現在我得再賣更多臭豆腐了。」

這是我第一次全身都浸在水裡。我坐著看蒸汽的水從天花板滴下來，第一次體驗到無重量的感覺。我的身體好像不是我的了，浮起來輕飄飄的。我在想偉立明年會不會再帶我來。

Rob Adams oil on canvas by Keith Burt

IT WAS LIKE A FEVER DREAM, that funeral. I’ve been able hold it together, detach and do what needs be done at funerals since then.  But I remember that funeral from a camera-like perspective, or perhaps that’s because of youtube, trying to review this shit, looking at the old footage of that funeral day. But even before I saw any of the pictures from that day, and there were many, not to mention the footage and stills from the semi-riot that followed, before I saw any of these pictures or film, it already felt like I was in a movie, almost slow motion, like I shared Dad’s ghostlike perspective and was watching it through his eyes in his absence. For a long time Dad was the voice in my head. I used to struggle with it – now I couldn’t say for sure and I wouldn’t much care.

I’m not like my Dad. No one will ever make a movie of my life, but it felt like I could fly around the cathedral that day, like a crane shot, while I sat perfectly still next to my mother Nora in the first pew in Grace Cathedral; I guess you could say I felt disembodied. Not only could I fly around the room, but I could hear people’s thoughts. Not their words exactly, but I knew what they felt. It was a strange feeling and I’ve only had it a couple times since. Well, I’m lying actually – I feel all the time what people think, hear how they feel and I wish I could turn it off. But at the funeral I was worried I was going to have a seizure or something. My fingertips were tingly and vibrating. I realised the city was an organism and I was able to pull back through the nave of the church to where my father’s agent sat several rows behind my mother and I felt that Mr. Cavet was very very happy and everything was slightly powder blue around the edges, the same color as the gas tank on my father’s old motorcycle. Like a ’56 Chevy Bel Air, Dad used to say of the color he painted that bike.

In my Funeral Movie Daydream, I flew to front of the church, to where my big sister stood in the pulpit like a blushing deer. She looked down at her notes, printed several times that morning before she’d gotten them right.

At the funeral, the police were everywhere and Seidel looked at the crowd and the cameras zooming and the police and she folded her notes into slow quarters. “You know,” she began, “We are all here for different reasons.”

“We all knew a different man,” she said. “The artist you admire was not the father I knew…and now…now he’s nothing but some melted gold dental work in that silver box over there.” My sister cleared her throat and half laughed. “I’ll bet not all the ashes in that box are his anyway. I hear they give two scoops of ash per customer. Just scoop it up from the bottom of the oven, doesn’t matter whose it is. It’s one scoop for a dead kid, three scoops if you’re fat and two scoops for everyone else.” My sister began to cry and she half laughed again and looked up.

Uncle Stewy, in his black beard and red dress, sat in the pew behind us and his mascara was beginning to run.

“It’s all just crazy,” said my sister, her face slowly fading from red to pink. “This whole thing is just crazy….” She looked up again and I looked up too. I thought there might be a pigeon up there amongst the grey stones.

My sister went on, “I know some of you are having Tibetan rites after this thing and I guess I don’t own his memory. I mean, he’s out there. He’s always been out there. But my father wasn’t a Tibetan. He never even wanted to go to Tibet. He wasn’t even a Christian. So what are we all doing here in this church?  Is this all one last joke on us? I tell you what we’re doing here. We’re just playing out the old….” I think she was going to say bastard or motherfucker, but then she stopped herself. Her face was now back to its normal pasty white.

“Well,” she said, “We’re all playing out his last scene, his last requests and he still has enough pull over us all to do it. And I’ve got to hand it to him, what a scene. I can hear him saying it now, what a scene man. So whatever you’re here for, whatever I say, isn’t going to do, or mean, anything. You can’t feel what I feel…I don’t even know what I feel.”

Many in the audience began to cry and I thought maybe I should try to cry.

My sister came down from the pulpit. And Stewy, the consummate performer in the second pew, stood up, eye make-up streaming onto his beard. He began a loud and slow clapping. Soon they were all on their feet, and even the police, who were already on their feet, started clapping. I was surprised at the unanimous applause. I thought her remarks had gone on a bit too long. A bit sentimental.  People always go on and on too long. They should be cut off.  In their goings on and on, it will all eventually end up being about them. At funerals there are always performers who try to twist the proceedings towards themselves, and their need for attention and approval dominates.

I stayed close to my mother in the first pew, as she put on her sunglasses. I wanted to hold Mum’s hand, but I clapped for my sister instead. My sister’s a bitch and we never really got along, but there are times when you forget to hate people and I didn’t want to be the only one not clapping.

www.jacketflap.com

My sister looked serious as all hell as she stepped down from the pulpit.  She was glaring at me the whole way back to the first pew. I got the feeling she didn’t want me to clap, as I if was the only one who might understand.

After the funeral and the scattering of Dad’s ashes in the fog a couple of days later, Mum and I returned to Australia, but my sister stayed in California. She had her PhD on Blake to finish at Berkeley, of course. But also, Seidel didn’t want to see Mum and I anymore.

Mum went back to the States a couple months later to sort out the final details with Ted Cavet – he’d paid for the funeral; I knew that. Mum stayed in the States for a couple of weeks conferring with Ted after I’d been safely ensconced in a new school. But after that trip to the States to close things off with Ted, my mother Nora never left Australia again.

- end of chapter 2 -

Cover art by Leon Rene Lapointe

After Dinner

I Sit

-for Mr.  Red Wood

AFTER DINNER I sit and wait for Wei Li in my room at my family’s old home; he had said, “I’ll be with you at the latest by ten,” but when eleven strikes I can’t stay quiet any longer, so I decide to sweep again.

My little brother Wei Li works.  He lives down the mountain in the city and he wants a lot.  His name means ‘noble erection’.  He is tall with blood shot eyes from lack of sleep.  He is a hotel cook.  The pay is average but since buying his tricycle cart, he’s been raking in a lot of money selling cho do fu at night. Wei Li’s savings go towards his ten year-old son’s education and to my parents and me.  He says he wants to buy me a three-wheeled bike so I can get around.  I tell him not to bother.   He should use the money to buy a permit for his tricycle cart so he doesn’t have to worry about the police.

I was two years old when it happened.  The doctor said it was polio.  We had no money for medicine. Its ok. On clear days I can haul my self to the outside toilet. When it’s raining I use the bed pan. I like sweeping. I sit on the floor and sweep where I can reach, and then throw the broom out in front of me and sweep the next section of floor until I get to the door.  It’s slow work.  I no longer enjoy learning about other people’s lives by watching TV or listening to the radio novels.  I ask for nothing. I don’t work. I don’t earn money so I can’t go around talking about what I want.

The old clock strikes midnight and I put the broom in its place by my parents wedding mirror. On the walls of my room are the yellowing pictures of 80’s movie stars Wei Li cut from magazines when he was a dreamy teenager.  I don’t like looking at them anymore, but they are too high for me to reach, so I lift my feet with my hands and shuffle outside to wait for Little Brother.

The plain brick house is home to my mother and father, and also to a four-year-old girl, my brother’s second child. Wei Li calls her on the phone he gave us but she rarely takes much interest.  She barley knows him.  The house used to be crescent shaped, but since the earthquake of ’99 and the mudslides that followed we only use two rooms. That’s when my father’s shoulder got hurt.   No question, I’m too big for him to lift anyway.

The air is nice outside, not too hot or too cold.  It is ghost month.  Chinese people say you’re not supposed to whistle during ghost month, but I sit and whistle at the moon while I wait, I don’t believe in ghosts anymore.

People say you’re not supposed to swim during ghost month either, that the ghosts live under water and will pull you down.  I have never had an opportunity to go swimming, but I can’t see any ghosts underwater when I look. Last year, I got out my mother’s big bowl, the one she uses at new year to make the dumpling mixture, and I filled that with water, and put it on the floor, stuck my head into cold water to look for the ghosts but I couldn’t see anything.  My mother came in and screamed at me. Knocked me over, water all over the floor. She thought I was trying to drown my self.  I don’t know how long I was under.

Wei Li still isn’t here, though I can hear a motorbike coming up the mountain out of the darkness, and I can see a headlight moving back and forth across the night sky, as the motor bike curves up the switch backs that lead up to our house.  The headlight looks like it’s a sword trying to swat the moon.  But the moon doesn’t care, it looks like it’s floating, untouchable.

The motor-bike stops, it looks like little brother’s but its got a side car attached.  Little Brother comes up the path to greet me where I sit next to the gate whistling.

“Big Brother,” he says, “I’m not polite for keeping you waiting, but I wanted to prepare my surprise for you.”

I finish the old tune I’m whistling, the one called “Plum Blossoms in the Breeze”. I don’t know how I know it. Everybody knows it.

Wei Li’s eyes look tired.  And he touches my shoulder and squats down beside me. “What’s the problem?”

“Don’t have a problem.  Long time no see.  You look tired and maybe a little fatter?”

He smiles at that.  “I wish,” he says.  “Father and Mother asleep?”

“They are,” I say.  “Your surprise, what is it?  It isn’t that you are late, that’s no surprise is it?”

“No,” he says, “I’m sorry, but look at that, that sidecar for the motorcycle.  It’s great.  We can go for a drive anytime we want.”

“When’s that?”

“Only if I don’t have business.”  Wei Li stands up.  “People eat tofu every night, but lucky for us they do.  Let’s go for a ride, the sidecar is only half the surprise.”

“Good,’ I say, and I lift my body with my hands and whistle my way down to the end of the dirt path.  My little brother knows enough not to tell me to stop whistling.

He helps to lift me into the Motorcycle’s sidecar. “Don’t you want to know where we are going?” he asks.

“It’s a surprise,” I say, and I don’t much care.

The bike has trouble starting.  My brother swears he’ll get a new one. We go down the mountain.  The roads are windy and, and you can tell where the government has fixed them up since the landslides.  The new parts are smoother, but I like the feel of the old roads.  I don’t know why they even fixed them, almost nobody needs these roads any more.

In about forty-five-minutes we are in the city, and it is still busy.  We go to a part of town filled with Karaoke TV places, betel nut stands, and street food vendors, and drunks.  The neon signs advertise places to eat, hotels, casinos and alcohol bars.  We park the bike next to a street food vendor, who is selling barbequed squid.  The food smells good, but I don’t want any.

The squid vendor, and his wife both hold cigarettes in their teeth as they turn the squid over the charcoal grill.  They are sweating in the cool night.

“Hey Wei Li!” the squid woman says, “You can’t leave that old bike here.  Our customers can’t get to us.”

Her husband rolls his eyes.  He makes a quick motion for her to be ignored, and my brother smiles at them both.  Wei Li goes over to the vendor and they smoke cigarettes and laugh.  The woman begins muttering to the squid.

I do my best to get out of the motorcycle’s sidecar, but Wei Li comes over and picks me up.  He’s skinny, but I’m light and he carries me easily between the vendors and motorcycles to a small door with a pink neon sign that has the symbol of bath house.

“Hey!”  I say, “Is this your surprise.  You think I need some spicy lady.  I don’t want whores, I don’t want any woman, there’s no point.”

Inside, the room is lit by only a few dusty bulbs, and there is a reception center with no one there.  We Li puts me down on sofa in front of the counter. “Big Brother, wait here.  Its not what you think.”

I shout after him as he walks behind the counter, but he’s gone behind the counter into another room and he’s gone.

Outside I can hear some men playing dice, and shouting at every roll.  I also hear the squid woman shouting at her husband.

Wei Li comes back, with towels and a key to one of the rooms.  He picks me up again, and takes me down a dim hallway until he finds the room with the same number as the key. He opens the door, and the place smells damp, and steamy.  Maybe there’s some soap or perfume in the air.  There’s also the faint smell of the sewer coming up through the drain in the bath tub in the middle of the room.

“Where should I put you?” asks Wei Li.

I don’t answer. That hallway needs to be swept. Wei Li puts me down anyway, and begins to fill the bath with hot water. There’s a lot of steam. He helps me with my clothes and puts me in the bath.  “When you’ve had enough, push this button and they’ll come and get me.  I want to get you another mobile phone,” he says.  “Now I’ve got to go sell some more stinky tofu.”

This is the first time my whole body has ever been in water, and I sit and watch the steam drip off the ceiling, and experience that weightless feeling for the first time.  My body is almost not with me, and feel like nothing floating.  I wonder if Wei Li will bring me here again next year.

a novel of 50,000 words

- literary fiction by Rob Adams

NOTE, A lengthy discussion of my father’s work, this is not. Though I went searching for my mostly absent father in his published and unpublished works, and consider myself an expert on the subject, I will endeavor not to deal with specific references to my father’s works as they have been adequately dealt with by other writers and biographers, with the exception of that Harvard cunt Sloan, who thinks he’s so clever and smart, though he’s really doing reverencing his own fiction. As I guess we all do at times.

I’m drunk as I write this, sitting on the floor of my mother’s living room. After I finish this revision, I’m going to put these papers in a box, and put the box under the house. Maybe my son Miguel, will find it when he is older. I hope he does. He needs to know the truth. Or at least I need to try to write it down, as I see it, so I’m not so alone. Maybe someone will know, someday, what I did.

– S. S. Brave

Brisbane 2010

Chapter 1

Police at the Funeral

 SAN FRANCISCO, 1988

WEEDS IN ALL THE VASES OF THE CHURCH as per the request of the deceased. Dad also left instructions before he died that everyone should wear a red dress to his funeral and most people obliged.

 I was thirteen at the time. Mother said it wasn’t appropriate for a boy of my age to wear a red dress – people might think she’d put me up to it. So I wore a blue blazer, the one with the too many brass buttons on the cuffs. All the buttons, including the two at the front, had tiny French horns embossed on them. That morning well before the funeral, I’d put on a powder blue shirt and my grandfather’s ancient but still respectable school tie.

I felt obliged to be a good son, as if dressing like a gentleman might help me to act like one.  I think I was trying to look normal. This was when I still tried. Before I had to live with what I did, before I confirmed to myself that I was a talentless hack, a fraud and a criminal.

The police at the funeral were also in blue and also had brass buttons. They stood at the back of the church, near the exits.

My mother, the widow Nora, wore a sort of Spanish red dress with small black hooks running down the side. Nora looked good and was heavily sedated. Even then I knew. I always knew when Nora was on the pills. She sat between my older sister and me in the first pew.

Before the funeral started, Mother said she appreciated the police presence. Even when the deceased was alive, the widow had not liked many of the deceased’s friends and thought many of them to be vampires, hangers on and drug addicts, which of course many of them were.

There were many at the funeral who were not Dad’s friends, but only admirers of my father’s work. The church was full of them, a sea of red dresses filling the long grey nave of Grace Cathedral. It’s funny looking back at the photos from that day, the multitude of mourners in red dresses – so many shoulder pads. ‘88 must have been the height of the shoulder pad trend in dresses and they all looked so ridiculous and serious and sad.

At the funeral there were also those who did not admire my father’s work, but were nonetheless intimates. They had no red roses in their hair, but they came for their own personal or professional reasons. Looking back on it, there were deals to be made at the reception – the Bohemian Club was down one real bohemian since Dad’s death and the press would need statements from experts and colleagues and there was always a chance to be printed up in a photo – funerals are often defacto industry conventions.  The conventioneer intimates were generally not in red dresses but dotted the crowd in somber blues and grays with the occasional cardinal or crimson of a bow tie.

Sloan was there, to be quoted as an expert; he was already working on his biography. Ferlinghetti was at the back in a tweed jacket and blue shirt and tie worn a la page.

There were some Stanford types that never would have gotten to first base with Dad when he was alive, but now that he was dead… my father’s revolution had turned into a middle-class cult that had nothing to do with his original vision.

A white KRON News Helicopter circled above the cathedral on the hill. Taylor Street was closed between California and Sacramento. And in the footage taken from the chopper, you can see the police on horseback and the red dresses milling around like pigeons on the church steps and even more people spilling over into the small park across the street.

I really didn’t understand all this at the time. Who knows how much I understand now – over twenty years have passed and I’m still basically the same guy. I’ve changed my name a few times and I’ve grown some beards. I’ve had some jobs, been to more schools, married a Mexican woman named Sania and had a halfy son. Done some pretty grown up things, I suppose, but I still basically feel like that fourteen-year-old at the funeral, wearing someone else’s tie, trying to sit up straight and be the dream, to do better than your parents, which is a hard gig when you come from a long line of overachievers and egoists.

At the funeral, I remember, Uncle Stewy, who was wearing his beard extra thick that month (his beard seemed to wax and wane like the tide) and Uncle Stewy looked good in his red dress. Uncle began to pass purple thistles to the police. The police accepted the and grasped the weeds’ thorny stalks.

There was some sort of church business at the front and then Uncle Stewy got hold of an offering plate and he began to pass sugar cubes down the pews.

By the time Stewy reached the front of the church my mother was white lipped. “What the fuck do you bloody think you’re playing at?” she hard whispered.

Stewy batted a guy-liner lid at Mother and smiled. I got hold of one of the cubes in the end and that was my first trip.

Ended up on the gravel roof of the Mark Hopkins, flat on my back, watching the wind and fog slowly tear the flag. There was a spotlight on the flag and pole. The flag chopped heavy in the wind, like the snapping blade of a helicopter. And the fog whizzed through the spotlight, like smoke and dust in a movie theater beam, only faster, like time-lapse photography, but anyway I’d stolen a bottle of Manishevitz from a Bar Mitzvah downstairs and I was terribly lonely, wondering where all the other 14-year-olds were, who were up tripping at 3am after their famous father’s funeral and who were now beneficiaries of some great cosmic curse.

But before all that, before everything changed, back at the funeral, sober as hell,  sober as only a 14-year-old can be. I was in shock and in a blue blazer, the crown prince of something no one understands, even today, there are books and books, but who can explain why any of it happened, that’s why the books keep selling… (I realise there are problems with prolapse here, or things being out of order, but perhaps Miguel can fix it for me, as I fixed my own father’s writing.  It wasn’t easy finishing what Dad started. But I guess it was easier than what he did: I wasn’t years ahead of my time like he was.

At the funeral, Ted Cavet, Dad’s editor/ agent/ business manager/other wife/ the guy who held it all together for Bill Brave, was one of those on the white shirt, burgundy sweater and tweed jacket team, rather than part of the red dress clan. Mr.Cavet was at the head of the church speaking. No one was listening, except maybe the suited lawyer types that arrived with Cavet.  He was reading that simple old poem about Buffalo Bill being defunct: “He used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfive clay pigeons just like that.  Jesus he was a handsome man, and what I want to know is; how do you like your blue eyed boy now, Mister Death?”

voiceseducation.org

And with that, Mr. Cavet concluded his remarks. There was a pause. Everyone listened to Cavet’s footfalls as he came down from the lectern (timing is everything, no one could get a crowd on its feet like Dad could, and I missed Daddy , Billy Brave, in that dead uncomfortable moment as Ted walked back to his pew).

The widow’s daughter got up from where she sat in the first pew, on the other side of my mother and Seidel, my elder, smarter sister went to the pulpit. She arranged her notes on the lectern.

“He was a great man and a shitty father,” said Seidel.

The crowd chuckled, including the police. A red patch began to grow on Siedel’s neck, creeping up one cheek, before invading the other. She always did that; I was somewhat pleased by my elder sister’s discomfort. It is rare that she loses her cool. She usually just keeps looking down at you from that cool place. Seidel cleared her throat and said some other things. Then the red went for her ears. Seidel had inherited Dad’s ears and they were the same color as her dress.

She told me later she was holding back and she wondered why; she barely knew the dead guy and what she did know of him, she didn’t particularly like. She used to say it to his face when he was alive. She was brave.

- Look for chapter 1,  part II soon -

//rma