Nocturnal Animals
REMINGTON GRAVES
There are sounds I can’t describe, sounds that dwindle past the ceiling in my home…somewhere near the telephone wires, perhaps. It feels as if it should be snowing the closer I lean my ear in to determine it, except it doesn’t snow where I live. For a short moment, I think of my first crush–I was seven years old. I sat next to her in her backyard as we ate cereal from the box. We stared at each other and her dimples made me feel at ease. Her parents were at work.
The antennae
of a cockroach
behind my kitchen trashcan
wave opposite
each other slowly
with all the time
in the world
Enjoying the absurdity of our world is painfully important. The pain in our world disguised itself as pleasure.
She had a boy’s name, my second crush. I can’t remember it now. She had very long blonde hair. Everyone would say so. Japanese eyes. She was the most popular girl in junior high. It started with a T, her name. Her and her girlfriends designed a ouija board from notebook paper and harsh penmanship one Monday during school. She turned around and stared at me on the gym bleachers.
“Want to join us?”
“Me?”
“No, the wall behind you. Yes, you, silly. Get over here,” she said with dimples.
I was too skinny
crooked teeth
chicken legs
short
curly puffy hair
I want to live a life where a spinning, smiling California sun greets me. I want to wear shirts other colors besides the absence of it. I reach out and touch the leaves of trees and bushes while I walk, mostly to keep my anxiety disorder pacified. I remind myself to breathe gently: inhale through my nose…exhale slowly and quietly through mouth.
Cranberry juice is my
drink at midnight
wine glass
to take a break from water
which is mostly all I drink
I turn
my
head
slowly
If I do it too fast, the room starts to spin
The ringing in my ears no longer surprises me
I want to go to sleep early like most people out there who are not on drugs
I sit on my black leather couch and ignore the fungus in my toenails and bite my lip while I type. I try to marry the moment. I want to deceive my brain that physical pain should take precedence over the existential l’appel du vide. I taste blood. The salty flavor is pleasant in the midst of my latent sugar addiction.
I am glad I do not know my father, so that I will never know if I have become him.
I am glad I do not know my mother, so that I can’t call her asking her what the weather is like
in her part of the planet.
∞
Notable Quotes
EL HOMBRE INVISIBLE
“This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games. All games are basically hostile. Winners and losers. We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers. ”
Gidget Goes To L
REMINGTON GRAVES
“What’s the matter, Gidget?”
“I don’t know. It’s the times, I suppose. Would you look at that man over there? He should be ashamed of himself.”
“Which one?”
“The one with the wig, for christ’s sake.”
“Will you lower your voice, woman. What on earth is the matter with you?”
“Do you not remember the words of Pastor Slanders?”
“What about them?”
“By gosh, do you ever pay attention at church?”
“Of course I do…sometimes.”
“You are a trifling man, Alfred. I don’t know about you sometimes.”
“Well, it’s just so boring in there. I only go to make you happy. Besides after John died, well, you are my only reminder of him.”
“Yes, my late husband…may the lord keep him.”
“Keep him where?”
“In his grace! What do yo mean ‘where’?” she said looking at her lipstick in a tiny mirror.
“I have never believed that church stuff. I have gone all my life to make my folks happy and then, I guess it became a habit. Just a thing to do.”
“Alfred!”
“Well, it’s true. I don’t believe all the nonsense in that damn book.”
“What on–“
“So that man over there likes to wear wigs, big deal. I see all the men at church drinking all Sunday long after service in their front yards. They watch pornographic movies, they’re gluttons, they gamble, they all put their pants on one leg at a time…your brother for example is a complete pig.”
“Leave Ronald out of this.”
“Its true. Just take a look at that fellow,” he said quietly leaning into her ear and holding on to to the pole next to his seat.
“Yeah, what about him?”
“I have seen that fellow ride this bus for years. Never caused any problems. Never seen him drunk or smoking cigarettes or bothering anybody no how.”
“He’s a deviant for christ’s sake.”
“Why? Because he wears women’s clothing? What the hell is wrong with it? I don’t like it, but that don’t mean it ain’t no good. I don’t like chocolate pudding, sure as hell don’t mean I should start hating folks who like to eat it.”
“Alfred, I am appalled. I’m starting to wonder if you have your fair share of questionable living.”
“Ok, ok, let’s not get excited. Take Joan of Arc for example.”
“Well, what about her?”
“Next stop, Fountain and Fairfax,” came the driver’s voice through static speakers.
“Well, she wasn’t just burned at the stake for being some supposed witch, you know?”
“How do you mean?”
“She was convicted of dressing like a man.”
“That woman was a saint.”
“In those days for a woman to dress like a man was a capital offense.”
“Oh, get out.”
“That book you like so much says it somewhere in Deuternonomy. Says something like, “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth to a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the lord thy god.”
“Don’t you dare talk about her that way, I tell you she was a saint!”
“How was she a saint if she was an abomination? Your bible calls her an abomination.”
“Well…I’m sure I don’t know. Are you sure about all this?”
“Poor gal, she spent her last night with her five English guards and the next morning, she was ready for her fate. She rescued her country from the invading English, being a cross-dresser the whole time.”
“This is very upsetting. And why did you want me to join you on this bus ride so badly? You were very persistent, Alfred.”
“That cross-dresser fellow that got off a few blocks back…”
“Yes?”
“John knew him.”
“What?!”
“They were friends, Gidget. I told him not to come over and talk to me while you were with me.”
“They didn’t…?”
“Of course not. He was very much in love with you. He simply had a think for broad’s clothes.”
“My lord…all those golfing days?”
“Bogus.”
“Jesus. How did I not see it?”
“He knew you wouldn’t understand. He felt subhuman about it. But Larry, that was the fellow in here a bit ago, he accepted him. So, naturally, they became friends. He could be free with him. You should’ve seen him, Gidget, he was so happy in them wacky heels. At first it blew my mind…but, I loved him–he was my best friend. Hell, we were in the service together. I got used to it. And just seeing him happy, well…made me happy for him. Hell, I ain’t never been that happy myself. Not since before Arlene passed.”
“I don’t know what to say…”
“He wanted to tell you. He was just afraid you’d leave him.”
“That damn fool. I would’ve never left his side.”
“1431…bus 1431 is the next bus and should be here shortly, folks. This is our last stop: L Street,” said the bus driver through the speakers.
“Well, Gidget, the ride’s over.”
“And what a ride,” she said under her breath, quietly.
∞
Antonin Artaud
REMINGTON GRAVES
“There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.”
–Antonin Artaud
My first encounter, if one can call it that, with Antonin Artaud, was with a scene of a film entitled The Passion of Joan of Arc. Handsome and still, he looked at something the rest of the camera crew could not see…in his robe, in a black and white scene he commanded time to travel at his desired speed…and I, being eleven years old, understood, that some men, were beyond understanding in all their alluring glory.
Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, artist, and actor who was sent to sanatoriums for his eccentric mannerisms, severed from his loved ones for up to four years at a time. He was drafted into the army at age eighteen but his incessant sleepwalking episodes caused his dismissal. Back in the loony bins, his restless mind was quieted with laudanum by countless doctors, which eventually led to his burning love affair with any and all opiates. The Theater and Its Double, his most famous publication, achieved him notoriety, whilst already attracting much attention as actor, surrealist playwright, and being a figure of visionary in experimental theater. The curious concept of the “Theater of Cruelty” was introduced in his manifesto, advocating that drama should travel from concentrated literary form to one incorporating all the senses. Artaud believed sincerely that if you confronted your most vile desires, an unclenching would occur from the grasp of hypocrisy and awareness of the true unconsciousness self would emerge. This concept was quite challenging and was to be considered a penetrating vehicle of transition for established thought. Insomuch that artist and rock stars took their cue from it.
When he was not in the rubber rooms, he bummed the streets and frequented one room after another in cheap hotels. He was running fast then faster from his own demons of madness and slowly but surely was becoming undone, largely due to the side effects of the drugs he consumed. Other writers, playwrights, and theater companies reached out for help to no avail. His lips had darkened from the deadly kiss of laudanum. Artaud began performing dramatic variations of his death only to be booed and laughed off stage.
Antonin began to submerge himself in the desire to sink deeper into his own theories concerning the depths of his psyche that he ended up in Mexico putting himself into peyote parties. Mad outbursts during lectures about himself obeying orders from Jesus Christ got his ass chained up and transported back to his home country. He then did five years of sheer terror in an insane asylum being subjected to electroshock therapy, in hopes of dispelling his obsession with witchcraft incantations. In the remaining five years of his life, he had become financially secure due to the sale of his manuscripts at auctions which afforded a slightly better life in a halfway house–which were written while he was boxed in. This time summoned praise for his previously unrecognized genius, and he then began with the opiates again. In the ultimate irony, he ended up in the heaven he so yearned for, days of constant opiates for they had to administer morphine as much as was needed to appease his dire pain due to colon cancer. This is where I should make a stab at how, until the end of his days, was an insufferable pain in the ass, but…I won’t. He was forty-two when he passed in the year of 1948.
Now, a man, I still hold back the tears when I see the dark priest with more passion than this Joan of Arc. I wonder…what did you see, Antonin? Whatever it was, it must have broken you. Broken men are attracted to that which breaks, in hopes to understand themselves better. As if ever, could they be put back together again.
You tried and you succeeded. And while you tried, fools thought you failed. Let me see that which transcends me elsewhere, even if it breaks me. With the strength of a hundred lightning bolts and the courage of a dozen dragons, let me appear the failure while I surrender to success.
Farewell, Opium eater and thanks for your cosmic confessions.
Hail Artaud!
∞
Perfect Lovers
REMINGTON GRAVES
The automobile has always had a sexual allure for me. The way the engine sounds when you turn the ignition, the smell of its hot machinery under the hood, the shift knob and its peddles, an appendage and buttons that allows you complete control: speed, its growls, its groans, sighs, scrapes and screeching– if not handled properly. When the human disease kicks in ( to take anything for granted ), I usually play classical music while I drive, but when the vessel and I voyage together and are of one mind, the experience is symbiotic and visceral. The intimacy is initially overwhelming and then its familiarity, a fond comfort. My hands grip the steering wheel with ambition and a healthy dose of animal anxiety. The windshield–her eyes, I see what she sees, the road betwixt two blurring pillars in the periphery. And we carry on this way, with a fervent love affair, a silent understanding of my need to be inside her, I need her to reach my climax and destination: “Point B.” She needs me to turn her on, without me she moves not. The elements attack and she sits vulnerable and alone.
My craft has been still and sullen for countless days now. I tried to turn her on. She lit up, but she wouldn’t start. She was ready but couldn’t seem to get in the mood. I took the battery I’ve used every faithful time to AutoDrone and they said it was fine. I was a fool to entrust these people, they don’t know her personally…clandestine in every corner…she’s reserved, private.
So, I took her to the doctor and left her there. Somebody had to help me jumpstart her and it was a different experience having somebody else become involved in the process. Don’t misunderstand me, I am a pretty progressive man, but somethings take some getting used to, I suppose.
Jealousy is not something we both feel; I have allowed others to take her for a spin. I cannot be in her interiors all day. She, no doubt, enjoys the handling of foreign hands. I drive other vehicles but very rarely. We both have stared at Bugattis on the road, Ferraris and even vintage Cadillacs and sigh almost in sync.
She is both hot and cold, fast and slow, likes my possession and never tries to posses. Appreciates my attention and digs on my affection, but knows a man of my caliber, a man wired this way, a god amongst mortals, could not be contained or altered. No lover worth her salt would want to, she says ravenous revs.
I have been riding my bicycle and it helps the environment and all that considerate shit, but there is nothing like embarking on a four-wheeled rocket and moving along faster than six-hundred and sixty-six horses on the road to nowhere.
Get well soon, my cold and hot, fiery, emotionless partner…you are, one of the many, perfect lovers.
∞