On the external wall of a liquor store in Southeast District of Columbia was some graffiti: God was here, but he had to leave. And below that was scrawled: I was here! Wishing you all the best, God.
What was the thing in your career that irked you the most?
Funny you should have me have you ask me that question.
Strange.
Son, it was being called a postmodernist. I don’t even know what the fuck that is! Some asshole tried to explain it to me once, said that my work was about itself and process and not about objective reality and life in the world.
What did you say to him?
After I told him to fuck himself and the horse he rode in on, I asked him what he thought objective reality was. Then I punched him. That’s why I had to leave my job at Iowa. That’s why we moved to Providence. Well, you and I did. Your mother went to Canada and married the flyboy. And the thing about your mother was that once gone, she could not look back, if I may segue in so non sequitur a manner, not that she would have become a pillar of salt or anything so horrible or fanciful or wonderful, but because in looking back she would be admitting that she was gone, that she had left something behind, and with that glance, with that admission, she would be doomed to recognize her memories as constructions of a left world, necessarily fictions, necessary fictions, because in looking back, she would see a reality to which her memories might be compared and contrasted and she would know that her memories were not that world and so all would be fucked, the world behind and the world awaiting. So, you see, it never pays to look back, maybe not even to the side. It’s almost like going through that whole mirror stage thing all over again, except this time you have to actually acknowledge the initial lack that must be present for the glance backward to be possible at all, and even if you don’t look back, the wall between subject and object, you and it, is already obliterated, but if you do, if you actually do look back, then god help you — and, I suppose, and as well anyone you look back at, if you will allow this clause to save this sentence from ending with a preposition. I might have blamed your sweet saint of a cheating mother for a very short time for leaving, but I never blamed her for not looking back.
Mom never left.
Says you. Says you. And yet there was a flyboy just the fucking same, just the same, just the same. There are many ways to leave; you’ll understand that better when you’re older and about to die and decompose into a blue oblivion. But let us finish off this Cyclopean egg, I’ll have mine scrambled. Its very shape suffices to suggest its vacuity, doesn’t it?
What are you talking about?
It wouldn’t matter if you understood.
You be Murphy this time. You’re sitting in your flat. You should be going over patient files and taking care of your tedious financial paperwork, but instead you are affixing the 135 mm lens onto your newly acquired Leica camera. Water is just beginning to boil in the kettle on your electric stovetop. The day outside your window is gray and overcast, but there is no threat of rain. You look into the face of the camera, then turn it around and stare at the viewfinder from a distance. The camera is in your lap. You want to look, but you can feel the kettle about to whistle. You want to look through the finder. You want to, but you must make tea first. You understand that you must make the tea first, don’t you? You need the tea because you’re going to be staring into this camera for a considerable while. You need to make the tea or at least remove the kettle, because if you don’t all the water will boil away and the kettle will get hotter and hotter until it bursts into flames and the kitchen will burn and the building will burn and Mrs. Hobble, the woman who hasn’t left her apartment in twenty-seven years, will burn up to death and so it really is better to just make the tea. And so you do. As you dip your bag in and out of the water in your mug, you imagine Mrs. Hobble, realize that you have never seen, but only heard, of her, sitting in her rooms like that, sheltered away perhaps preparing for something, passing her life in preparation for something that will never happen. The way we all do.
Martin, Ralph, Andy, Philip, and Nat were sitting at a round table in the hotel room. They were playing poker, but not for money, as Nat was opposed to gambling. Martin took two cards. Andy took one. Ralph took none. Philip took three. And Nat took four.
You’re not good at this game, are you? Martin asked Nat.
I’m better at other things.
I’m out, Ralph said.
Me too, from Philip.
Ditto, said Andy.
Call, said Nat.
Martin put down his hand and revealed two aces and two eights.
Nat stared at Martin’s hand and felt a chill. Then he simply placed his cards facedown on the table. I guess I’ll have to call it a night, he said. Tomorrow is the big day and I’m going to go look at the mall while it’s still empty.
Even on the twenty-seventh there were so many people around and arriving that it was difficult to know who was friendly and not. We had for some time known about Hoover’s desire and mission to undermine the movement and that he especially wanted to destroy Martin. What we didn’t know at the time was that Kennedy’s little brother had okayed wiretaps and who knows what other kinds of surveillance were employed. Regardless, we were all swimming or sinking in a glass bowl. I came from the SNCC meeting, still fuming that my lines in John’s speech had been excised, knowing well that they were probably right, but knowing also that I had been inserting just a fraction of the truth of what we all felt. Everything felt off, awkward, like a typewriter that would not sit level on a desk, like a toothbrush with one long bristle that you can’t find when you stare at it, like the smell of gun oil in a baby’s nursery, like a simile in the mouth of the man who is robbing you. Anyway, I sat down on the grass near the Washington Monument at about dusk to eat a ham-and-cheese sandwich and noticed a couple of suited white men walking the mall, chatting up people. They might as well have been wearing sandwich boards that read fbi and it was this very fact that made me doubt they were, but of course they were. They finally made their way to me.
What’s your name? one asked. They each took a knee on the grass in front of me, hiking their trouser legs up at the thigh in unison.
Puddin’ Tame, ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.
No, really, what’s your name?
He apparently had not heard me. Puddin’ Tame.
Do you know who we are?
A couple of queers cruising the park at the early edge of some particular hour? Profoundly lost John Birchers?
He’s funny, the other said to his partner.
I’m going to eat my roast beef sandwich. If you want to arrest me for that, it does have mayo, be my guest. If you want my name, then you will have to arrest me. By the way, what are your names? I shouted. Who the fuck are you?! I made my voice as loud as I could make it. Don’t shoot me! Help! These bad mens wants to hurt little ol’ me! Somebuddy, hep me, please! Oh, lawdy! People turned and looked. Some men started to approach.
The agents stood.
See you later, I said.
Yes, you will. And though he didn’t actually say it, the word nigger rang out. Like a shot, it rang out. Nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger NIGGER NIGGER. What they call the N-word these days, as if N-word does not mean nigger. Can’t you just imagine some dear old white racist blue-haired old ladies at the church picnic or bake sale? Claire, I heard that Strom has been sleeping with, well, an N-word. No, no, really. What is the world coming to?