Sex,
Love, or Both at Once
SKIN
TWICE
—graffiti found in Amsterdam
HOLD
ON!
Incorrect!
How
can I
make
the
best
of a
bad
situation?
Remember
that
the
ones that seem
bad
aren’t always so?
Anyway,
a lot has happened.
Everyone
went to bed, for example,
and
forgot all about me. And that
nightmare
(this one very much reality)
of
the jealous cellphone ringing incessantly
that
I can’t help but listen to; voice messages
I
obviously shouldn’t be listening to. But
I’m
the
crazy one. I’m the bad boy. Always have
been
(well, ever since a senior in high school
when
I did a complete about-face). What did
I do
about it then? Head straight in the
other
direction. Drive for miles like I’m heading to
California
to realize my dreams. Years later,
after
I thought I had realized them, I head straight
away
to the stress (home). Well, I am
home. Or
at
least I always believed myself to be in a home.
Somehow,
I slept a little bit. This part never
had
a
hint of danger before. But now? Now, I’m a
“chickenshit”? Maybe so, but not in the way in
which
it is
pelted at me. The irony keeps ringing
in my
head and I spin around for years wondering
when
the vertigo will ever go away; if I'll ever figure
out
the firmness of reality or the moist breath of honesty.
Such
things that never existed (or perhaps I was born into
the
wrong era). Or I skipped the class on
chickenshit
(which
would,
of course, have to be during or after my senior year in
high
school). Was I something different before? Was it better?
I
feel as if I’ve been split from
my
toes all the way up to my head in an extra large
cheese
grater. Silly, silly, heart that acts
like rubber;
takes
forever to damage, even just a little bit.
But a little bit
is
all it takes. Now that’s complete
erasure, I think.
Which
me do you think was better?
silly rendition of human behavior...
—Marlon Brando on the Dick Cavett
show,
shortly after he
refused his Academy Award
for The Godfather
