Eric Darton
I. DAYS OF THE DEAD
The plural tendency of things. Happenstances upon a more-or-less globe, more or less rotating and revolving in an irresolute key, a something-tonic scale.
The veil is thin, Katie says about this season.
“The world –“ really, the world? – “is thin, between my bones and skin,” sang [Tom] Verlaine once, and I heard it.
The tendency of things to fuck with things, to clump and disperse, spread and go narrow. The marble index. Go Nico, wherever you’ve been.
I affirm, in the strongest terms, your right to be dead.
And Wolfgang’s. And Bernardo’s. And Jim’s. And Grainne, who I came to despise in some kind of relation to her own self-loathing.
And now Chris. My mother and father are somewhere in there, amidst the brambles. And Gregory, Paul, Gladys, Joe.
I affirm your right to be dead. To be wherever you are. The tendency of things to be where they are.
I affirm the right of water to freeze, to rain, to thaw, to make my heart pound. Of vessels to constrict and relax. I affirm the right of water to gather someplace else. Go, Nell. Go, Frank, Go inlaws. I affirm your right to make noise from wherever you are. Or dance, or rise, or not, as will and circumstances move move move you.
The tendency of names to form roll calls.
Of hearts to pound.
Of veils to be there and almost not.
II. INSCRIPTION
The inscription began some time prior to the electoral TRiUMPh, and surged toward the inauguration, after which it became compulsory: the inscription being his name on one or more zones of your body.
In the manner of his real estate holdings, say The Palace, or Resort and Casino, the name was followed by the category of property, as in Trump Mother, Trump Sanitation Worker, Trump Manicurist, Trump Physician’s Assistant, Trump Slut, Trump Crack Addict, Trump Dog Walker, Trump Gym Coach, Trump Schizophrenic, Trump Compulsive – it mattered not whether the designation was high-flown, degrading or neutral: what counted was that one had been inscribed into the ranks.
Nobody could have imagined that the tattooing industry, already so flush, would attain such centrality in the economy, cultural and economic. Being inscribed with multiple disparaging identifiers such as Trump Loser, Trump Island of Garbage, or Trump Vomit, could signify a punishment, but not necessarily, for many chose to heap upon themselves epithets previously regarded as odious.
For my first inscription, I chose Trump Intelligentsia, but that was not deemed sufficient. So I received several other modifiers which at first I found humiliating, but at length learned to accept. Indeed Trump Failed Writer even seemed more accurate as a descriptor than any I had been honest enough to come up with on my own. Trump Coward, well, who could deny it?
Plus, it remains the job of the writer, however Failed, to see things as they are, innit?
So I don’t trouble myself about the typeface. Long as they get my name right.
III. OUTSIDE
The big O that swallowed us all.
Big O makes a lot of errors, but that’s the cost of no-accounting.
Big O gets high, beams up, so it doesn’t feel the scratchiness of us going down. Smart water would help that. Stupid water even better. Big O wants you dancing, inside.
Bottles of piss springs eternal. The true cannot be proven, but the false shouts here I am even as its swallowed.
Some things the big O chews languidly, some things it gulps. According to its caprices.
On a day like today, when most folks believe that everything will be decided one way or the other, the big O is especially voracious.
I just turned around and my bicycle was gone. But a minute later big O burped up my helmet which had been hanging from the handlebars while I write this amidst the degenerate commune encamped on the perimeter benches.
Big O ate the guy’s bedding and left him there in his skivvies.
Yes, you can still get high for $5, more or less. High that is.
Some kid comes skateboarding up while big O is drinking the fountain dry.
Everyone’s gonna get something. Even if it’s a shadow.
This is the smoke that rises without benefit of stacks.
Long as you got something in your lungs.
Someone asked big O his name and he wrote it down in a chalk circle on the hex-stones. It’ll be there a long time, ‘cause big O abolished rain.
IV. THE BAR
Inside, the bar was almost completely dark. One could see some forms, but no distinctions.
The hostess laid her hand upon my arm. “Calm yourself, you’re among friends. You will not fall further here. Come, sit. Have a drink. You may not know what you’re drinking, but it will be good.”
We moved more deeply into the room and I heard the jazz band. How could they play without light for their sheet music? Still they sounded fine.
“Here you go.”
She seated me at a comfortable booth from which I could observe a play of dark movements. My drink arrived, a cocktail which I could not identify, potent though not overbearing.
I felt knees press against mine as someone was seated opposite.
“This is Isobel, she’s one of our regulars. The usual, right, a Golden Umlaut?”
“Please.”
“Eric, you doing OK?”
“Yes, fine.”
Isobel’s scent reminded me, not unpleasantly, of Provence. And she had, as it turned out, a little dog, which sat demurely upon my thigh for the rest of the evening.
Reader, will you believe me if I say that this is the entirety of the story? Or nearly so, for I became a regular, and was often seated with newcomers. And that my drink of choice was called a Gloriosky. Though it always tasted different.
Somehow, we found our way.
“Quartet” is excerpted from the feuilleton collection Amber Road.
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