Christmas Party, 1956

by duncapher

Christmas party, 1956 2012. Only the few of us standing. It’s been a long time coming, yes it has, and I saw it before it had even rounded the bend; in that distant crescent valley there, I heard the lofty rumble, soft, the easy moan of the quiet discrepancy, the nervous hands of the deeply ashamed – and why are you so ashamed? I looked amongst them for a friend. Everyone’s gay. They’ve been drinking. They talk about their recent lives. I try to get drunk with them and laugh, and I get halfway there, upon my knees, doing my strange little dance, for the masses to laugh – and they laughed at me – and I sold them my tricks, I showed them my studies, all the ancient secrets, the vanities of time, the despondencies of Rome, the dissidence of titans; but what are you saying, they asked me, and I fell totally mute. I could not say a word. The girls from my childhood looked at me. God how I wanted to fuck them. Ice in her tracks. I’ve heard the things they say about her. I know she knows me well enough by now to know, and I trust her not to mistake me. But what would I do that demanded deliverance thusly, like some kind of cross? Know yourself, said the young prince, upon his white horse; and he rode swiftly across the moors of Spain and into the deserts of Africa, through the middle east, and India; the story of an arms dealer, a man made of clay, from the natural earth but an idiot, a childish voice in the infinite din; and I, well, I am just made of this regular air, this regular stuff they call air, and it’s wholesome enough for the meanwhile.

A picture on a wall… Who cares. What’s that you said? Oh I’ll say it again. I’ve said it a hundred times already. Word for word no need to change it. It’s my monologue. The monologue of a printer. Pressman, no shame. There are no secrets in my chest; I’m a regular epiphany, no conclusion, no resurrection, just emptiness, echo chamber, loving and warm; the hot agonized breath of the platinum lizard, upon his burning tomb, the burning hot earth of the butte in the canyon, glory in his twinkling eyes. No-good faced rat killer. I took him down once to the dump and shot rats with him. But now they’re all goons to me. I feel like a ringleader in a travelling troupe of baboons. The goons are baboons. How I resent them! I totter away to my own my little part of the house, in the bedroom, where I lay my weary self to rest and look at my watch; it is bedtime! I have a routine that I do. I eat my pills and drink my solutions. I clean my skin and change my clothes. I crawl into bed and black out for twelve hours.

In a prosperous valley in a prosperous part of the country I lived for those long, quiet years, guarding my treasure and preening my fur. I practiced playing instruments again in those days. Peaceful instruments. Finger instruments. I took up the shade in the evening and relaxed in the glow of the old moving pictures. Most of the old motion pictures are lost. Only a desperate fraction of movies from the teens, twenties, and even thirties simply do not exist anymore. They are like plays; they were finite, even they could not outlive their audience. I cried for them and was desperate for them. In the end of course it did not make a difference. I walked through the streets of Mexico looking for an answer. I found nothing like that, of course. It was a gambit from the start. Now, maybe, if I were a different man… But if I were a different man, I would live in the city. I am not a city man. In the old days the city was a stick in the mud, a truck stop where the boys would go up to get drunk and be sluttish, and come home in the morning by Casey Jone’s train to the promised land, the good and civilized valley where only the finest citizens lived in the finest of homes. They built the Cedars for a walking tour. It is the oldest home in the valley. I have been drinking the water that drips down from the rafters. I believe perhaps that it has magic powers. What is the power of Christ in a home from those thoughtless ages past, unthinkable centuries of the cycle of life, unyielding, my God it is great! Until one day the crooked old townsfolk held the railroad company for ransom, and the railroad just took their tracks away. Old Casey Jones left his station and the valley dried up when the TVA built those reservoirs, and the truck stop burst into a masochistic city, full of vice – and the vice spread… And now in the pockets of honor the quiet men hide, watching the sun rise and fall from their window, feeling close to the frost on the glass, like it’s their very own frost on their very own panel of glass; at the neck of the world, in the heart of the beast, sleeps the philosopher-poet, tucked carefully away from the rest of the world. I burned my brain to pieces with drugs and I did so deliberately. It was not the last mistake I’ll ever make. There are no virgins in these woods. There are no unicorns, either. This is the age of the snake as the bedfellow. Eternal living… I have seen it all. It’s a big gorgeous mess. A prison chaplain said to me, “They laid down their colors and cried;” that is the way that the good angel died, a poet and an armsdealer, imitating old Petronius, old Papillon, that devil McQueen – give it all you got, you gotta give it all you got! (That was my line! That was mine!) When you leave you are welcome to take my with you. I will put my arm around you and rest my head against yours. Rest that weary head of yours, rest that heavy, weary head.

They wonder and I sometimes think I should just tell them! I want to, God knows I’ve tried. There is one girl, one person I could tell it to… If she would listen, boy, would I speak! As for that one man – well – to hell with him! To hell with them! Not to say I do not love them. But God, do I love her.