Ears Upon Some California Dirt,
Listening For Signs of Life on Mars
You are as beautiful as a telephone, colors
of bone, rocket ship, and cocktail lounge——
—Rebecca Lindenberg
So why can’t you call?
Oh yeah, because it’s
MEAN WEEK. I didn’t mean to,
honey, I promise. I didn’t
because I’m mean, too, occasion-
ally. Occasionally I try to be mean.
I find it difficult. Isn’t that strange,
family I come from and everything?
See, I did it. Oh, yes, I did. But it
isn’t ever easy. And you know what,
also? Also, when everyone is down
and I’m the clown, the funny
and most depressing clown you’ve
ever heard, depressing is worse than
scary because depression’s the scariest
when everybody’s just back
from the party, down like a log, because
down is where logs usually get made,
so down is usually where they must
be to get logged, you know? Unless
there’s some new technology of
which I have yet to be made aware.
Which is always the case, as it turns out.
What I was asking, that question which keeps
burning my eyes red and turning my head
into rotten hammered potatoes (Since I’m
presently catching up on music cuz I’ve been
nearly four years in the bunker, unable to show
my face, unable to move my lips sometimes, unable
to pay for the spinach I needed to beat up Bluto, I
must give a shout out to Tierra Whack!) Beating
people up is something everyone knows I do regularly.
Like bigot jokes. Funny thing is since nobody really
knows me anymore (and they never really even seemed
to, but there were once plenty who were around enough
to, you’d think), and like I just noted parenthet-
ically, since maybe nobody ever even hardly knew me to
begin with, these bigoted beating up jokes maybe are
best not brought up. I know many rumors that have
started because of opening my mouth to riff on what
I absolutely believe to be true and fine, yet have never
even tried such things (like bungee jumping, only these
things are usually about sex; not sex while bungee jumping
either), but note to depressing clown self trying someday
again perhaps (and flailingly failing) to liven up the down-
trodden (“It’s a PARTY, DAMMIT!”). Nope, to be real,
which, oddly, is a rather hardheaded goal, I am a pacifist
to the extreme, Heck, I even planned conscientious
objection or hitchhiking to Canada from Arkansas if a war broke
out, back when the draft was the draft, or really half a draft, and
one I’d yet to sign up for. It was the days of Jimmy Carter,
and I believed I’d have to go to war with Iran. It was 1979, I was
all of twelve years old that Christmas, the first one of the in-
famous hostage crisis (ok, toddlers, think Ben Affleck’s
Argo). Mean again! We’re friends, right? Naw, I’m just joking.
But decent fellows? Naw, I’m just joking. But respect, man!
I was never mean to you. Was I ever mean to you? Sure, I had to
pretend to be mean just to make sure you don’t slip and fall. It
has happened more than once, and somehow you keep missing that.
Missing everything about nice and help and promises and respect
and gracious and gratuitous (the good kind). You had a dream,
you said. You seemed serious, called it that at first. Then it was
just something you had to do, or, NEEDED. But what were
you doing during everything I did or did not do to give you
that dream? Showing myself to be the jackass I am, I suppose?
So, all kidding aside, and I mean all kidding. Why. (?)
Can’t. You. Even. Call??? That one simple thing that I asked
of you. That one tiny effort that would put this whole thing at least
neatly into a drawer that never need be opened again. I decided
or your convinced me that you deserve better. Easy enough. But
what do I deserve? What did I get? Again, I joke. I cannot let
go, am told this is a joke taken entirely too far. And not just by
you, even as you laugh dementedly (not at anything funny
at all, by the way). It was my word that was a joke to you. My
promise. To you. It was your promise, your word that was
a stand-up routine to you. And to me? It was a commitment.
A big one. I stood by. One I made happen under the worst of
circumstances. I did it! I stood my ground, waiting for
your end of the deal to follow. Waiting for you to be
safe. Waiting for you to arrive (I would pick you up
at the airport, of course - that, I suppose, was another
one-sided joke, oft-repeated by both of us, but no matter
how laughingly from me, dead serious) (Do I mean
dead in a bad way? It is the word that comes naturally
into my head, no matter how hard I try otherwise.)
So if you must, go ahead. Run like a coward
from every ringing telephone. I have a certain fam-
iliarity with this routine. The difference here is I have
more cards in my hand. And I have that adamant I will
never let anyone ever do this to me again thing. It’s a
very large thing, as it turns out, I am thinking, looking
at my unplayed cards. I do not like this sort of thing.
But you cannot even call me. Even though YOU know I’m no
jackass. I mean not, you know, like, all jackasses; but maybe
I am the loser jackass. And his cousin, the fool jackass. And would
you just look at me, sitting here (I know that it is an impossibility,
but nevertheless) STILL attempting to save your sorry ass
with a telephone. Hi, it’s me. How are you doing? Please don’t
forget the consulate, and where we were the autumn we met, when
you landed right in front of that temple in Bangkok, all serious-like.
